Mobility brings us together

I was raised in a small town in Liège right next to the border with Maastricht. I had one bus every 2-3 hours, the last bus was at 6p.m., bad bike roads, over the weekends it was nearly impossible to use public transport and going to school was always problematic. Moreover, learning to drive the car was just not an option for me. The worst part about it all was having a dad living in the Netherlands and me depending on public transport to go see him. This is what drew me to this topic and which motivated me to look for ways to improve mobility. 

During this excursion I learned that I’m not the only one struggling with this issue. I saw two young women sitting at this bus stop and they told me a similar story to mine. I learned about all the bike routes made for tourism or just being of a bad quality making them practically useless to go to school or work. I’ve learned that I’m not the only one who has to make the best of a bad situation. 

Learning to drive is not an option for everyone, it is expensive and just not sustainable so I do not believe that this is the solution. Putting in a bike route is also more complicated than it sounds. They are working on improving the biking network in the Westhoek but these new routes will probably not cross the border. Moreover, laying a new train track that crosses the border is very expensive and requires a lot of work on both sides of the border. The Northern region of France has more liberty to make decisions around mobility in their region but the Westhoek does not have this freedom, they need to work with the government which prefers investing in extra trains between the cities that are part of the Flemish diamant for example. Some pilot projects are now running in The Westhoek, these are a few bus lines that cross the border that will hopefully stay active since I think they can help people a great deal. I also found the idea of Henk van Daelen (Heuvelland Vrijstaat) really great. He talked about creating a bicycle library which could help make bikes more affordable and accessible. Combining this with a renovation of the bike routes could make biking a more attractive solution. 

All by all, there are some really great projects in the works but finding good sustainable solutions is not so easy since collaboration between two countries with different political structures can be quite a challenge. However, everyone deserves to be able to go to work, to school or visit their families without having to struggle on a daily basis. We should keep working on improving mobility for everyone, leave no one behind.

Sam Henckens

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