“Because the income from parking fines and other traffic violations is invested elsewhere,” Touring said. The Belgian counterpart of the ANWB criticizes the unsafe approach to traffic.
The cliché goes that you feel with your eyes closed when you enter Belgium. Memes with a billiard-level road on one side and a pockmarked patchwork on the other endorse a stigma that Belgium cannot shake off. According to Touring, everything can and should be improved.
More and more fines
‘Millions in parking fines but still no better roads’, was the recent headline in the Belgian press. The number of fines issued is increasing year after year, especially now that many municipalities use external companies to enforce their parking policy. Add to that scanning vehicles that work much faster (but not necessarily more accurately) and you understand why income from parking violations has risen sharply in recent years. The result is that a city like Antwerp simply collected 13.5 million euros in 2023, while Brussels easily earned double that. Extrapolate that to the whole of Belgium and the income from parking fines alone amounts to tens of millions.
Such a fundraising not only causes bad blood among the offenders, Touring also does not agree with the way of working. The mobility organization criticizes the fact that these revenues are not reinvested in the road network or traffic infrastructure. Instead, the proceeds go into a common pot that is allocated to other budget items such as education, culture, sports infrastructure and the environment. However, not only the Belgian road network but also the mobility infrastructure is in urgent need of an injection of money, especially in Wallonia where the number of charging stations continues to lag behind and the road surface is often even worse.
Hundreds of millions in revenue
The same applies to other traffic fines such as speeding tickets. These have also increased significantly in recent years due to new section controls and additional speed cameras, especially in Flanders. According to Touring, that money does not flow back enough into the traffic infrastructure, although the amounts involved are even larger. Meanwhile, the Belgian government is also pursuing 433 million in overdue collections from previous fines and convictions. Thanks to an integrated approach with customs and other services, offenders who are stopped can be obliged to pay everything in one go. Otherwise their vehicle will be confiscated.
However, a seizure last week was not enough for an 81-year-old. When the traffic police ran his name through the system during a check in Belgian Limburg, it turned out that the best man had 6.23 million euros in debt to his father. At first, officials thought it was merely a traffic fine and probably an error, but further investigation revealed that his company had been forfeited in a fraud case. The colleagues from HLN managed to dig up a photo in the meantime on which he appears together with former Formula 1 boss Bernie Ecclestone. Enough income for the Belgian government, but it is not always invested where it is really necessary.
– Thanks for information from Autoweek.nl