July 2008:  Leuven Railway and Bus Station as PT-connection node to Rock Werchter.

Every year on the beginning of July the Rock Werchter Festival 2008 takes place in a little town at 13 kms north of Leuven. This year the festival happened from Thursday 3rth to Sunday 6th of July, and it was visited each day by average 85 000 people. 

In previous years De Lijn systematically built on his image of a trusty mass mobility performer for the festival. As a result this year during the four festival days De Lijn carried ca. 122 200 visitors (2005: 84 000 and 2007: 118 000 both directions together) between Leuven Railway & Bus Station and the festival area in Werchter with neighbouring camping grounds. It was estimated that nearly 40% of all festival visitors have made their trip by bus.

The festival ticket price included the price of a round trip by bus, and this was an important incentive to stimulate car free festival visiting, even for one-day visitors.

The bus link was operated as an express and congestion free route. Buses covered the distance between Leuven station and the festival court in 16 min.  De Lijn provided an average headway of a bus every 90 seconds, mobilizing 142 drivers, and 60 buses (mostly articulated).  At Werchter two rather long straps had to be followed to cope with the huge flux of rolling stock.  The bus station of Leuven has been renovated and enlarged 8 years ago, and could easily host the crowd.

For this massive 4-days performance De Lijn-drivers and buses from other Flemish cities and regions also have been involved, as the just introduced summer time tables had set free personnel and rolling stock that could provide the needed capacity for the “mass transit Leuven-Werchter”.

Hans Verbruggen, VECTRIS
Belgium