In September, the real-time travel information for Flanders’ bus network De Lijn was only about 90 percent reliable, with one in ten busses or trams listed as on schedule arriving late or never at all.
The figures come from data requested by Flemish MP Marino Keulen (Open VLD), according to Belga News Agency.
“Waiting a long time for a bus is never pleasant, which is why De Lijn has had real-time information for a few years now,” Keulen said.
“In practice, the app and the signs at the stops are not always equally reliable. The reason is that all cancelled journeys have to be entered into the system manually. If not, the bus or tram is assumed to be running... It's 2021 and De Lijn still hasn't managed to automate that using GPS data.”
Real-time travel information is supposed to make it clear to passengers whether they have just missed a bus or tram, whether it’s delayed, or whether it’s cancelled. But the figures show that this isn’t always the case.
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In September, 10 percent of the buses and trams that the app claimed were on schedule were late, or had never even left their stations. If a journey is not manually cancelled, it simply remains in the app and on the electronic signs at the stops.
When the employees who enter that information go on strike, the flaws in this system become evident. During the strike on 24 September, De Lijn only managed to remove 8,000 of the 15,000 cancelled journeys from the route plans in time, meaning real-time information proved to be completely unreliable.
On that day, travellers had to rely on a pdf file on the website in order to find out which buses and trams were running.
“The reliability of real-time travel information depends on the accuracy of the available data,” Keulen said.
“It’s unacceptable that travellers are given the wrong information in the app and on the signs at the stops. I would like to remind De Lijn that we are in the 21st century. Working with GPS data has been possible for longer than today. This really needs to be changed soon.”
