BRUSSELS (Brussels Morning) – The Brussels public transport company STIB will reopen the front doors of the buses and trams for travellers on Monday. The doors were closed at the start of the corona crisis to minimise the risk of getting infected for the driver. However, at the Flemish company De Lijn, the front doors will remain closed for the time being.
Since the start of the corona crisis, travellers on buses and some older trams have had to board at the back, and on buses, the first seats behind the driver’s cabin were also not used. That will change on Monday. Travellers will again be able to board at the front and back from Monday.
At De Lijn, the front doors are not yet reopening. “We have no concrete plans for the time being to reopen the front doors,” said spokeswoman Karen Van der Sype. This will certainly remain so as long as the face mask obligation continues to apply. No one can be reached at the Walloon public transport company TEC to tell whether the front doors will open again.
At the beginning of this month, the passenger movement TreinTramBus already argued for the reopening of all doors, partly because it is now difficult for travellers to ask the driver for information. Trams and buses also lose more time at the stops if everyone has to get on and off through the same door.
Contactless payment
Buying tickets from the bus driver is a thing of the past in Brussels. Some time ago, STIB introduced contactless payment for those who do not have a subscription or multi-event card. “We will keep how things have gone over the past two years, people can mainly pay contactless. People have already adopted that habit in the past two years,” says spokesman Van Hamme.
On Tuesday, STIB announced that it reached a new record in passenger numbers last week since the outbreak of the corona pandemic.
