De Lijn claims season-ticket holders make an average of 90 bus and tram trips a month. Instead, the survey suggests, the true figures are only 52 for people living outside of towns, and no more than 21 for city-dwellers. According to their figures, only 226 million journeys were actually made, instead of 508 million.

The difference is important. The number of journeys delivered is used as the justification for the subsidy De Lijn receives from the Flemish government -- €943 million in 2008, or more than 80% of the authority's budget.

De Lijn has rejected the research as "not serious". The sample size is too small, the authority says: pollsters from the Namur-based Notre Dame University Faculty interviewed 717 people in Ghent between the ages of 22 and 75, only 207 of whom had a season ticket. It also includes a group of over-65s who are not relevant to the discussion. In 2001 De Lijn will introduce a chip-cart similar to the Mobib card now in use in Brussels, which will register every single actual journey in real time, and put an end to discussion once and for all.