For this year, the company will have a deficit of 5.5 million euros. But that is what The Hague stands for. The government is compensating for public transport for the corona years. That compensation will end at the end of this year.
The counter for next year comes to a deficit of 8.4 million euros. At the beginning of this month, the expectation was that it would be 6 million, but that has already been adjusted. The public transport agency itself uses almost 4 million euros from the reserves to absorb this, but then there is still a considerable shortage. This also applies to the years to come.
A total of 21.4 million euros is being sought to make up for the shortfall up to and including 2026. The shortfall is actually 33 million euros, but 12 million can be covered by reserves.
“Mainly not extending the compensation from the government is the cause of the shortage,” says director Rosalinde Hoorweg. “In addition, we also notice the Ukraine effect: higher fuel prices.” A fierce lobby is still being conducted in The Hague to find the cabinet willing to extend the compensation. “But we don’t assume it.”
And so the agency is thinking about other options. That is, for example, increasing the passenger fare. “We are in the middle bracket. We are not the cheapest, but certainly not the most expensive,” says Erwin Stoker. He is referring to the rate per kilometer. For the public transport agency Groningen Drenthe, this stands at 17.5 cents per kilometer. Six agencies in the Netherlands have a more expensive rate, five a cheaper one.
An increase of 5 percent, which at 0.875 cents is less than a cent per kilometer, yields 1.3 million euros. An increase of 10 percent is double that. Whether the agency will do that, however, remains to be seen. “We are in a time when we want to win back travelers,” said Stoker. “Then an increase is not the best signal.”
Then you arrive at the timetable. To cancel some buses on busy lines. That a bus runs every half hour on a route instead of every fifteen minutes, or that four buses run per hour instead of six. In the most drastic case, a bus line itself can be canceled altogether.
“Anyway, it’s going to hurt at some point,” Stoker says. The public transport agency thinks it can save 5 million euros on the timetable.
Ultimately, the government is the only one that seems to be able to prevent this. The provinces by paying more, or The Hague by extending the compensation. Fleur Gräper, chairman of the executive board of the public transport agency and provincial administrator in Groningen, already has a warning. “The expectation is that the deficit will get bigger rather than smaller.”