To the east of the city, Line 62 will be extended 3km east from Bordet to serve the headquarters of Nato and Eurocontrol, while Line 94 will be extended north from the tram museum stop in Woulwe- St Pierre to Woulwe shopping centre and Roodebeek metro station. Last July the Brussels regional government approved plans to convert the section of bus line 71 between Porte de Namur in the city centre and the Delta public transport interchange in Auderghem to light rail. Construction is expected to begin in 2015 and the 10km line will open in 2018. “Our busiest bus routes are becoming saturated, and they need to be converted to light rail, starting with Line 71,” says de Meeûs. “In Brussels we are able to build a kilometre of tram line for ƒ15m, and we are very proud that we can build lines so cheaply, but these are still big investments that need the support of municipal and regional authorities to become a reality.”
Stib is modernising its tram fleet with the acquisition 220 Flexity Outlook LRVs from Bombardier, the last of which is due to be delivered next year. While these low-floor vehicles are longer than the trams they are
“We want people to see that they can walk, or cycle, or use public transport and that this is a real alternative to the car. We want to be a city that provides multimodal mobility.” Brieuc de Meeûs
replacing, Stib is considering a range of additional measures to further boost capacity on the light rail system. “We’re still increasing frequencies on some tram routes, but parts of the network, particularly lines 3, 4, and 19, are reaching saturation, so we’re looking
for solutions that will give us extra capacity,” says de Meeûs. “We are studying whether we could run 50m or 60m trams with 2.65m-wide bodies, but this is an old network operating on narrow streets, so it will be a challenge to accommodate larger vehicles without
IRJ January 2014
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