Greenest public transport concession in the Netherlands awarded

| 14.07.2011

Arnhem Nijmegen City Region has announced that the public transportation concession of Arnhem Nijmegen City Region is awarded to Hermes, a wholly owned subsidiary of Connexxion. This 10-year concession under the product name of Breng (now about 150,000 passengers a day) will start in December 2012 and is truly the greenest concession in the Netherlands. Hermes will deploy an extensive fleet of green gas buses and trolley buses, thus ensuring a CO₂ reduction of 90 percent, including neighbourhood busses and taxi busses. All buses (except trolley buses) in the city region will use natural gas with certificates for green gas, which is sustainably and regionally produced, thanks to the agreements with CNG-Net (a natural gas stations operator), Essent (an energy supplier) and ARN (a waste treatment company in Nijmegen).

Arnhem Nijmegen City Region is a cooperation body of twenty municipalities and invests dozens of million of euros in the coming years to strengthen the public transport in its region. An important pillar of the policy is CO₂ reduction. The tender had thus a strong requirement that the CO₂ emitted by (regional) buses must be reduced by 75 percent. The tender specifications forbid diesel buses to be deployed. Furthermore, the tender specifications had a number of important requirements in terms of good and accessible public transportation, use of the cleanest diesel trains in the Netherlands on the line Arnhem - Doetinchem and better coordination between public transport and spatial development.

Two transport companies have participated for the concession tender: Hermes and Keolis. Balancia, together with many other advisors, has supported Keolis in composing and writing the bid for this concession. As a subcontractor of TransTec, Balancia has developed, among others, the social safety plan, the participation plan, and the environmental plan.