Overview
- This week EBS told the provinces of Flevoland, Gelderland and Overijssel that the long‑term IJssel‑Vecht concession is no longer financially viable and requested provincial support to avoid future service threats.
- The operator was hit with multi‑million euro fines after widespread cancellations and staffing problems in 2023–2024 but reports improved punctuality and far fewer cancelled runs from 2025 onward.
- EBS cites rising costs, lower post‑COVID ridership, and electric‑bus challenges such as high capital needs and difficulty obtaining grid connections for chargers as drivers of its shortfall.
- Experts say provinces face three fraught options—enforce fines and risk operator collapse, agree phased extra funding tied to costs, or re‑tender the concession—and warn each carries political, legal or practical downsides.
- The dispute spotlights a wider sector problem: procurement that rewarded very low bids and decade‑long contracts made before COVID now misallocate risk and may force new models for funding and contract design.