Why have concrete blocks at the E40 exit reignited Woluwe’s mobility dispute?

Brussels

Place

Brussels

City and region containing the junction and responsible regional administration.

Why it matters

City and region containing the junction and responsible regional administration.

About

The City of Brussels is the largest municipality and historical centre of the Brussels-Capital Region, as well as the capital of the French Community of Belgium, the Flemish Region, and Belgium. The City of Brussels is also the administrative centre of the European Union, as it hosts a number of principal EU institutions in its European Quarter.

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The argument turns on the difference between approving the closure in principle and approving its physical execution. BX1 and La DH reported that Maingain disputes Pans’s claim that the municipality endorsed the concrete blocks. He says the plans submitted by the Brussels Region mentioned neither blocks nor planters and has demanded an apology for what he considers a misrepresentation of the municipal position. He has also argued that the freed space could have supported car-sharing near the motorway entrance.

Pans refuses that distinction. According to her account, reported by 21News, the municipal college issued a favourable opinion on closing the bypass during Brussels Mobility’s test phase. She argues that the blocks are secondary to the underlying decision: Woluwe-Saint-Lambert supported removing the free-flowing right turn and should now accept political responsibility for the consequences. Neither the available municipal documents nor a detailed operational assessment from Brussels Mobility has been published alongside the press coverage, preventing an independent comparison of exactly what was approved.

The six-month test is part of Brussels Mobility’s summer 2026 programme and is more consequential than the street furniture suggests. A bypass allows drivers to turn without entering the roundabout; closing it pushes that traffic into the junction, where it mixes with other movements. Residents quoted in local reporting have blamed the change for substantial queues, but no validated before-and-after figures for traffic volumes, journey times, collisions or diverted traffic were available in the reviewed sources. Those measurements will be essential if the trial is to establish more than competing impressions.

The dispute also exposes a familiar fault line in Brussels governance. Regional authorities manage major roads and pursue network-wide objectives, while the 19 municipalities answer directly to residents affected by congestion, parking changes and the appearance of temporary installations. The official Good Move

There is a longer horizon behind the junction. In a 2020 answer to the Brussels Parliament, mobility minister Elke Van den Brandt described the Parkway E40 objective as transforming the urban end of the motorway into a city boulevard and improving its connection to the regional cycling network. The bypass trial is not, by itself, that masterplan, but it sits on the same strategic corridor and therefore carries symbolic weight in the wider debate over how traffic should enter Brussels.

Later events reinforced the institutional tension. On 17 July, BX1 reported that Maingain and Woluwe mobility alderman Gregory Matgen also challenged a temporary project at Montgomery, alleging inadequate consultation and opposing continued use of New Jersey-type barriers. That separate case does not establish who is right about the E40 paperwork, but it shows that the blocs beton controversy has become a broader argument over regional methods rather than a quarrel about one row of concrete.

Brussels Mobility is expected to evaluate the E40 arrangement after the trial. The questions to watch are whether it publishes traffic and safety data, whether the municipality releases its original opinion, and whether the barriers remain, are redesigned or are removed. Until those records appear, the physical closure is confirmed; responsibility for its precise form remains disputed.