The NMBS has an unlikely ally: Donald Trump. The railway company has had significantly more passengers since the outbreak of the energy crisis due to the conflict in the Middle East. Both the sale of individual tickets and the number of commuting season tickets increased by approximately 10 percent in March and April compared to a year earlier. “One in two travelers says they are more concerned about high fuel prices.”
Journalist at HLN
In March and April 2026, NMBS registered a 10 percent increase in the sale of individual tickets compared to the same months last year. This trend also continued in May. The number of new commuter subscriptions was more than 9 percent higher in April than in April 2025. Spokesman Dimitri Temmerman points out that the growth in train use has been going on for some time: NMBS already has 25 percent more occasional travelers today than before the corona period. “But the extra boost from March onwards can also be linked to the energy crisis,” he says. “In the months before that, the number of travelers also increased, but not to that extent.”
Part of the growth may also be explained by the Train+ discount card, which NMBS launched last autumn. The card offers a 40 percent discount during off-peak hours and weekends and already has more than 1.2 million users. Yet one in two travelers in a survey that the railway company conducted among some of its customers explicitly made the connection between higher fuel prices and their increased train use.
More travelers obviously also bring new challenges, but according to the NMBS there is sufficient space for the time being during off-peak hours and on weekends, the times when most new travelers arrive. The NMBS has already deployed extra capacity between the major cities. Since December last year, a third train per hour has been running between Leuven and Brussels and extra late trains arrived on Saturday evenings from the major cities. According to the spokesperson, punctuality is also not compromised by the extra passengers. “Punctuality has never been better than today in the past twenty years.”
Train travel emits approximately five times less CO2 per kilometer than driving a car, according to the NMBS. But higher energy prices also affect NMBS itself. The railway company is the largest electricity consumer in the country, as 95 percent of the train kilometers driven are electric. “We continue to look for ways to reduce consumption, including by having train drivers drive more ecologically, so that they drive a little slower on some sections and speed up a bit on others.”
It is less clear whether the increase in train use is also visible in a decrease in road traffic. The Flemish Traffic Center registered slightly fewer vehicle kilometers in April 2026 than in April 2025 – 51.9 million compared to 54.2 million – and that figure was also lower than in the spring of 2019, the last year before corona. But current traffic is broadly in line with the years 2023 and 2024.
Peter Bruyninckx of the Traffic Center is cautious with conclusions. “When we look at the traffic jam figures in recent weeks, our gut feeling tells us that no major shift is visible. But traffic jams are of course not only dependent on the number of vehicles: road works, incidents and the weather also play a role.” He also points out that the spring of 2025 was exceptionally sunny, which could bring more leisure traffic and potentially cloud the comparison.
In any case: NMBS is happy to see the influx of travelers. The public service contract that the railway company has with the government provides for a growth of 30 percent more passengers and 10 percent more supply by 2032. “With the growth we are already achieving, we are well on schedule,” says Temmerman.
“We do not want to lose those travelers if fuel prices drop again. To do this, we must expand our offering and renew the fleet. By 2032, half of our trains will have been renewed.”
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