Train punctuality was down again in Belgium in September, following an improvement over the summer holidays, according to the punctuality scoreboard published by Infrabel on its open data website.
Last month, 86.7% of trains were considered to be on time (i.e. with a delay of no more than five minutes).
In July and August, rail punctuality reached 91.1% and 91.6% respectively. In September, however, only 86.7% of trains reached their terminus station with less than six minutes' delay.
If cancelled trains are added to the calculation, punctuality in September reached just 84%. These figures follow the same trend as in the months preceding the summer break.
More than four out of ten delays or cancellations were caused by "third parties", such as people crossing the tracks.
In fact, this type of incident caused the most disruption to rail traffic last month. On 9 September, people on the tracks at Leuven caused 2,370 minutes of delays and 21 train cancellations. Another similar incident took place on 1 September, at Watermael, when 40 trains had to be cancelled.
Across the whole month, 3,561 train journeys were wholly or partially cancelled, representing 3.7% of the total.
