The history is soon summed up. At the end of 1996 the engineers of Belgian Railways (NMBS) submitted their building application for the underground section of the HST. The city of Antwerp organized three information meetings and during the obligatory public investigation, private individuals and professional groups made their objections known. Policy?making bodies1) and the relevant transport companies gave their advice. The relevant minister ? the social democrat Baldewijns ? assimilated it all to reach his wise decision.

Anyone at all familiar with the Antwerp HST file is bound to hoot with laughter at this description. The foregoing procedure was indeed followed, but each step has a different meaning, all depending on one’s perception. Since there is no plan of communication, inconsequential items attain the status of major events. New facts are constantly being constructed, there is no agreement on the meaning of the most crucial words. For the residents of the Dam district, ‘public investigation’ means they can still steer the HST trajectory to their advantage. No?one is prepared to disillusion them, not even the competent town councillor, who pays them constant visits. She has admitted to the undersigned that ‘everyone knows that the tunnel will be emerging at Dam (meaning a lot of Dam residents’ land will be expropriated, pb) – although I can’t remember how I got to find that out’. In this file everyone knows everything, but that knowledge has no source nor does it lead anywhere. The whole matter seems, in all its slowness, to be beyond control. A local official I questioned was so despondent as to exclaim: ‘Can’t you see we’re doing our best?!’ Others involved refer to the growing confusion, to a procedure that works like a war of attrition, a bad habit in Antwerp. ‘In the past twenty years we haven’t managed to resolve a single major infrastructure issue,’ a senior official groaned.
With some decisions it is not even certain that what everyone is telling everyone else, does actually take place. Quite a few of those concerned claim that the by?pass trajectory has also been examined ? the much?debated (and cheaper?) alternative for the north?south connection. That alternative ? advocated by the Gewestelijke Ontwikkelingsmaatschappij, amongst others ? planned the HST halt at Berchem, a location close to the by?pass and with parking facilities near by. But has that alternative ever been studied properly? The NMBS refers to the Belconsulting company’s report on the environmental effects ? it devote a single paragraph to this subject, and rather obliquely at that ? and to its own study. ‘We don’t have any real studies,’ the spokesman of the NMBS subsidiary, TUC rail, explained, ‘but you can examine a thing by looking at it briefly.’ He remarked that he did not understand why everyone – even the groups of senior citizens whom he sometimes addresses ? still insist on the by?pass. A more valid explanation might be that the political choice of the tunnel (and the decision to use the Central Station as the HST’s stopping place) was taken on 23 January 1990. After that date the NMBS felt it was exempted from examining any other alternatives. The HST had to arrive in the centre of Antwerp whatever the price – these were also the sentiments of the then Burgomaster, Bob Cools.
When the Railways delivered their ‘building application’ at the town hall six years later – packed, rumour has it, in cooking oil boxes ? the authors saw it more as an announcement. They wanted to build, and the city was expected to do what was needed to make that possible. The NMBS engineers redesigned entire squares, accommodating car parks above and below ground, but thought it unnecessary to consider the impact on the surroundings or on traffic flow. Their ‘proposals’ took absolutely no account of Antwerp’s existing policy. Counter to the General Structure Plan2) they designed new barriers to a major square (Astridplein), the entrance to Central Station and the crucial bend in the east?west axis. Counter to the ‘Urban’ programme3) the NMBS forgot to link the HST station with the working?class districts to the north. Counter to the policy objectives of the (green) councillor Vogels, the building application planned several hundred parking spaces under Astridplein, in the apparent assumption that this would be the best way to recoup investments. The city’s advice was negative; it requested four?party negotiations, to be chaired by a neutral adviser.
The lack of clear communication has meant that the HST was present ‘physically’ long before application to build was submitted. The ghost was at work. It ensured that road works were stopped prematurely, got residents to move house, caused a good many small investors to turn cautious. A while ago, reconstruction of Turnhoutsebaan had to be suspended abruptly. The important main road ? replanned to strengthen the east?west axis ? was apparently intended to cope with the trams and buses which will be rerouted during work on the HST. Apparently, because at present no?one really knows how things stand.
Around two hundred people attended an information meeting for the section north of Central Station (the tunnel trajectory) ? quite a turn-out by Belgian standards. The Railways sent someone from public relations who had had next to no briefing from the engineers. He didn’t know whether the passing of the excavator would cause cracks in your house, and maybe not everything was known about the insurance claims for damages, but yes, all aspects have been examined – there’s nothing to worry about. That kind of explanation is bound to have an effect, precisely in districts like Stuivenberg, where the predominantly immigrant population ? still without voting rights ? is buying and rebuilding apace. The HST will also make its mark above ground, as a discouragement to a number of citizens/investors/residents if nothing else. It is all the more remarkable then that the city is not acting as an interested party and demanding clear information.
In the spring of 1997 the four?party consultations were set up with a steering committee coached by Marcel Smets, who had redesigned the station area at Leuven. The participants are the city of Antwerp (Vogels, the town councillor in question), the NMBS, and the urban and regional transport companies. Minister Baldewijns ? the fourth party ? is being represented by Patrick Debaere, the inspector general at the Flemish department of roads and traffic. Smets it seems is proceeding in the opposite direction, beyond defeatism and a war of positions. Information which was kept under wraps in the past is now flowing freely among organizations, departments and various policy bodies. At last there is an office providing not only advice but also training for (and dialogue between) government services. The four bodies have unearthed a number of new scenarios expanding upon the Antwerp mobility plan. The regional transport company has discovered that in and around Central Station, it is offering several (competing) means of arriving at the same destination. The roads and traffic department wants the reconstruction of Turnhoutsebaan to be accompanied by a policy that better attunes shopping inside and outside the city. For Flanders these are revolutionary insights indeed.
Patrick Debaere has described Smets’ approach as exemplary: ‘I am indeed representing the minister here, but have quite a comprehensive mandate. Nor have I been told that I may not think or do certain things. In theory, these consultations can be about every aspect, as we are sitting round the table with people who know they can’t do it all. It is an example of how we should always work. In a city like Antwerp you can’t really do things without an interdisciplinary approach.’ Isn’t the think?tank an alibi to wrap up the entire dossier behind closed doors? Debaere doesn’t think so: ‘Today we’re making a strong plan, in the spring of 1998 we’ll take it to the public. But again we’ll only be proposing principles and overall solutions. I don’t imagine we’ll get full halls with that.’
The emptiness of the halls, now and no doubt in the future, also has to do with Antwerp’s urban culture. This event differs from the ‘City on the river’ event of 1993 in that no?one will be questioning the implications for urban culture. The SOMA urban development company ? originally conceived as an ‘interface’ between policy, market and the non?profit element ? has shut itself away in the nineteenth?century part of town where it manages a clutch of poverty funds and issues advice on spatial planning. It doesn’t look as if the ‘metropolitan’ outlook will be with us quite yet. For the press too the passage of the HST through Antwerp is a non?issue, something councillor Vogels claims he regrets: ‘The fact that an investment of 20 million francs arouses so little interest in the press is not just coincidence. Such matters go beyond the competence of your average Antwerp newspaper. They prefer to write about dogs’ droppings and the Russian mafia in Antwerp.’ Anyone reading the local papers will be hard put to disagree with Vogels, But is it merely a matter of competence? Politicians are surrounded by a public opinion largely of their own making.

1. Various urban services (including the urban development company and the department of spatial planning and traffic) and the Flemish department for spatial planning, housing and the environment.

2. The general structure plan for Antwerp (GSA) sets long?term goals and priorities for the entire agglomeration, such as strengthening the east?west axis. The plan ? upheld by the present councillor as a policy document ? focuses on making visual/physical links, bridges and gateways.

3. Urban, the revitalization programme, runs until the end of 1999 and mainly aims at economic rehabilitation of the project area, the north?eastern part of the central city.