>This is an extraordinary construction site, that of the Mons train station. Unusual because of its size, but also and above all because of its price and its delays. Between the preliminary project and the final version, the budget exploded. From 37 million euros at the outset, it has ballooned to 324 million euros today.
>
>The initial budget has therefore been multiplied by ten. All this without a new public contract. An illegal procedure. In addition to the budget, there is the question of deadlines. Normally scheduled for 2015, the inauguration of the station should not take place before 2023. #INVESTIGATION tells you the story of a construction site that is blowing up public finances.
>
>An investigation by Martin Caulier and Arthur Gillet
Smells like more PS corruption …
Wallonië heeft hier een enorme middelvinger neergepoot naar alle Belgen maar de Walen in het bijzonder. 1 op 4 kinderen groeien op in armoede? Fuck you, extra Calatrava! De NMBS functioneert niet? Nu ben je vertraagd in een kunstwerk van een starchitect voor wie zitbanken niet in het concept passen! Sinds het wegvallen van de zware industrie loopt de economie achter? Who gives a fuck, we hebben een stalen lul gebouwd!
Ik dacht dat het een vereiste was voor Waalse projecten om over budget te gaan? 👏😃
I’m all for of exciting architecture everywhere, and even spectacular architecture here and there as well, certainly for public buildings, but anyone with even the tiniest bit of insight in the matter could predict that this was gonna go badly.
Don’t know if true, but I’ve been told that Calatrava did a very similar design for Leuven back in the day, and it was declined because it would be to expensive. A Samyn design was used instead (makes sense, in some ways, Samyn is the Belgian Calatrava-van-den-Aldi). Mons has one third of the amount of passengers Leuven has, but Di Rupo wanted a Calatrava and nothing else, it was a ridiculous idea from the beginning. I say this as someone who in general has a very positive opinion of Di Rupo.
When you’re so preoccupied with whether or not you could, you didn’t stop to think if you should.
“It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong.” – Thomas Sowell
don’t see anybody arguing against rail travel as a concept when this happens but when mismanagement and delays happen at clean power plant construction sites that is for some reason a global argument against that type of energy generation as a whole
Weird, why waste so much money on a trainstation in Mons of all places ? It’s just your average town with not even an especially large amount of commuters.
And to think about the general economic situation in that region..
Seems like a summary of 4 decades of PS legislature everywhere: corrupt, managed and decided by people without vision and métier. Overly expensive with money going to all the wrong priorities.
Parti Socialiste, the cancer of the French speaking part of Belgium 🇧🇪.
My mom used to work on the other side of the train station ( ministère des finances). The only thing people were asking is some kind of bridge to be able to go to the other side of the train station without having to walk for 20 minutes.
In Luik vantzelfde
Wafelijzerpolitiek in action. Disgusting.
Mons doesn’t need a 300+ mio euro train station. It doesn’t even need a 30+mio one. It’s fucking Mons.
Oh, DiRupo’s prestige project? Who would’ve thought.. I was kind of pissed back in the day about this. Hasselt station was in dire need of an overhaul, escalators that kept breaking down etc.. But no, there was no budget for that. Mons station, on the other hand, got more funding than entire Limburg..
It also blinds you with the sun’s reflection when driving towards it.
Somewhere somebody mentioned that Mons was in line for an overhaul, just like stations in Antwerp, Gent, Brussel,… I can help but to wonder which station in Brussels got a renovation recently.
16 comments
>This is an extraordinary construction site, that of the Mons train station. Unusual because of its size, but also and above all because of its price and its delays. Between the preliminary project and the final version, the budget exploded. From 37 million euros at the outset, it has ballooned to 324 million euros today.
>
>The initial budget has therefore been multiplied by ten. All this without a new public contract. An illegal procedure. In addition to the budget, there is the question of deadlines. Normally scheduled for 2015, the inauguration of the station should not take place before 2023. #INVESTIGATION tells you the story of a construction site that is blowing up public finances.
>
>An investigation by Martin Caulier and Arthur Gillet
Smells like more PS corruption …
Wallonië heeft hier een enorme middelvinger neergepoot naar alle Belgen maar de Walen in het bijzonder. 1 op 4 kinderen groeien op in armoede? Fuck you, extra Calatrava! De NMBS functioneert niet? Nu ben je vertraagd in een kunstwerk van een starchitect voor wie zitbanken niet in het concept passen! Sinds het wegvallen van de zware industrie loopt de economie achter? Who gives a fuck, we hebben een stalen lul gebouwd!
Ik dacht dat het een vereiste was voor Waalse projecten om over budget te gaan? 👏😃
I’m all for of exciting architecture everywhere, and even spectacular architecture here and there as well, certainly for public buildings, but anyone with even the tiniest bit of insight in the matter could predict that this was gonna go badly.
Don’t know if true, but I’ve been told that Calatrava did a very similar design for Leuven back in the day, and it was declined because it would be to expensive. A Samyn design was used instead (makes sense, in some ways, Samyn is the Belgian Calatrava-van-den-Aldi). Mons has one third of the amount of passengers Leuven has, but Di Rupo wanted a Calatrava and nothing else, it was a ridiculous idea from the beginning. I say this as someone who in general has a very positive opinion of Di Rupo.
When you’re so preoccupied with whether or not you could, you didn’t stop to think if you should.
“It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong.” – Thomas Sowell
don’t see anybody arguing against rail travel as a concept when this happens but when mismanagement and delays happen at clean power plant construction sites that is for some reason a global argument against that type of energy generation as a whole
Weird, why waste so much money on a trainstation in Mons of all places ? It’s just your average town with not even an especially large amount of commuters.
And to think about the general economic situation in that region..
Seems like a summary of 4 decades of PS legislature everywhere: corrupt, managed and decided by people without vision and métier. Overly expensive with money going to all the wrong priorities.
Parti Socialiste, the cancer of the French speaking part of Belgium 🇧🇪.
My mom used to work on the other side of the train station ( ministère des finances). The only thing people were asking is some kind of bridge to be able to go to the other side of the train station without having to walk for 20 minutes.
In Luik vantzelfde
Wafelijzerpolitiek in action. Disgusting.
Mons doesn’t need a 300+ mio euro train station. It doesn’t even need a 30+mio one. It’s fucking Mons.
Oh, DiRupo’s prestige project? Who would’ve thought.. I was kind of pissed back in the day about this. Hasselt station was in dire need of an overhaul, escalators that kept breaking down etc.. But no, there was no budget for that. Mons station, on the other hand, got more funding than entire Limburg..
It also blinds you with the sun’s reflection when driving towards it.
Somewhere somebody mentioned that Mons was in line for an overhaul, just like stations in Antwerp, Gent, Brussel,… I can help but to wonder which station in Brussels got a renovation recently.