Options

Belgium, Transport 1 Minute

This is good. With hybrid working becoming increasingly established, the Belgian trains are introducing new (and, hopefully cheaper) season tickets to reflect this reality.

I am one of the 60% of season ticket holders commuting fewer than five days a week and, although the season ticket is (just) worth it, I am paying for journeys I don’t take. One of the proposed options is for 120 days travel a year, and this is more than enough for me, and I will certainly look into this when renewal time comes around.

Hybrid working has become the norm for many people and, when it works, it works well. It is nice to see that the national infrastructure is now also adjusting to this reality.

Published by Paul

Reader of books, watcher of films, player of games. British father of three, now living in Belgium and making a living from building interfaces.

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3 thoughts on “Options”

  2. Yes, in my region of Canada the colleges are on the hybrid schedule as well as offering some classes in person and some online. They have also adapted something called hyflex which means that the professor who is teaching in the classroom must also provide a live feed to students preferring to stay home and learn virtually, as well as record the lecture for later viewing for those people who couldn’t make the time of the lecture. At first people were saying it was an inconvenience but I see a shift in adapting to specialize needs that were very structured and inflexible before and made it more difficult for students in particular. A lot of the students who are taking courses part-time are working part-time and sometimes have multiple jobs, this hyflex option gives them opportunities to still get an education while also feeding themselves or their families by working full or part-time.

    In terms of how this impacts our mass transportation system, they have been slow to adapt but I can see that they are talking about improving both accessibility and connections while simultaneously considering the prices must remain low for people to actually use them when they need them.

    Of course Canada’s massive spaces and great distances makes it a little more difficult for transit systems; Belgium is a small country as was Switzerland where I grew up, and the transportation system is much more efficient and smaller places.

    It’s wonderful to read about all these cultural changes worldwide, thank you for sharing your experiences from Belgium!

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    1. The hyflex system you describe sounds really good. More flexibility is always a good way of improving accessibility.

      As for the transport, it’s taken a while for the train company to catch up, but things are steadily becoming better aligned. And it certainly makes sense for people to not have to pay for journeys that they are not taking.

      I’d be interested to find out how things are now working in Switzerland. The Swiss are famously efficient when it comes to things like public transport.

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