The entire House of Representatives believes that the cabinet should invest more money in regional public transport. Transport deputy Nelleke Vedelaar is delighted with this.
If no extra money comes from The Hague, regional public transport will be cut short or there will be an 11 percent rate increase. Possibly even both. Both are not a solution, according to the provinces and transport regions. If there is no extra money, the timetable will have to be cut considerably because fewer buses can run with the same money. The fear is that if prices rise, people will be chased out of public transport and travelers who did not travel by public transport during the corona period will not return.
The cabinet should contribute a total of 1 billion euros in 2023, 2024 and 2025 to keep the current public transport in the countryside and in the cities at the current level, the joint provinces have calculated. It is not known where State Secretary Vivianne Heijnen of Infrastructure and Water Management will get that money from. Vedelaar: “The portfolio of the State Secretary is not filled with money that can be freely spent and the cabinet has to cut spending. The regions are now showing by raising extra money themselves to prevent further impoverishment of public transport. That is not a signal only to the Secretary of State, but to the entire cabinet to look for money. And we will continue to remind the House of Representatives that they have submitted this motion.”
All transport regions have more or less the same problem. The cause of the millions shortfall in the Drenthe-Groningen transport region is, among other things, that the number of (bus) travelers has still not returned to the level it was before the corona crisis. So there is less income. The price of electricity and biodiesel for the buses has also risen sharply since the war in the Ukraine. The collective labor agreement wages of the bus drivers have also recently been increased. Finally, there is a high rate of absenteeism at Qbuzz and that also costs extra money.
But the help from The Hague for regional public transport after corona will also stop. So that extra money is gone. And the indexation, which is the amount that provinces receive from the government for increased costs, lags considerably behind the actual cost increase.
But despite the motion, the Hague solution is far from there, so Drenthe and Groningen will take care of the financial problem themselves next year. The gap of 8.2 million will be solved by spending cuts. The bus will run less often on the busy bus lines and the holiday timetables will be stretched. That yields 2.5 million. The public transport agency takes 3.5 million from the reserves. In addition, the provinces and the municipality of Groningen must make an extra contribution: 2.15 million euros more. Drenthe will cough up more than 750,000 euros extra next year. But then only the problem for 2024 is temporarily solved.
The long-term financial situation of public bus transport in Drenthe and Groningen remains as bad as ever. If nothing changes, the deficit will increase to a total of almost 30 million euros in 2027. In the coming years, the public transport agency can also make the millions of shortfalls a lot smaller by drawing on its piggy bank. Even then, bus lines will have to be cut back and extra money from the region will have to be added. And if the public transport agency takes money from the reserves every year, the money will be completely gone by 2027 and the problem will be immense.
And not raising the tariffs will result in a deficit of 11.5 million euros in 2024, which will add up to 44.2 million euros multi-yearly. This shortfall can then only be covered by a drastic cutback in the timetable and/or an even higher contribution from the two provinces and the city of Groningen. Vedelaar therefore does not see this scenario as a real solution. The Hague must deliver, according to her.