Noorderkempen station, an analysis

 

 

When I started writing this article I originally had intended to write this in a similar vein to my article about Lage Zwaluwe station(Which can be found here!). This was mostly because in my kneejerk reaction, embodied Noorderkempen station much of the same problems as Lage Zwaluwe station. Far away from any meaningful settlements, poor bus connections, little in the way of facilities etc etc etc. As I began writing the article however I began to realize that I didn't as much disliked the station itself as much as I disliked getting to the station. Unlike Lage Zwaluwe has Noorderkempen station actually quite a lot going for it, it is however held back by the infrastructure around it and the strange decisions made by De Lijn(the Flemish bus company).

So today I am taking a departure from complaining about the Netherlands to complain about Belgium instead. There are many things to complain about in Belgium. To the point that complaining about Belgium has almost become a cliché of sorts. I shall therefore try to restrain myself and refrain from making obvious jokes about Belgium. Anyway let's talk about train stations. 

An NMBS MS75 trainset

 

Belgium has a lot going for it when it comes to it's trains. It's rolling stock tends to be somewhat outdated(to put it mildly) but overall has Belgium pretty dense rail coverage(denser then the Netherlands in some places) and is the Belgian national rail company(NMBS/SNCB) pretty good at it's job. Today I want to highlight something that has been a thorn in my side for a while now and where I think improvements can be made. 

 

Noorderkempen station is a train station located on the high speed rail line between Schiphol Airport(NL) and Antwerpen(BE). Specifically it is part of the Belgian line HSL4 located between Antwerpen and Breda(NL). It is located right next to the Belgian town of Brecht and credit where credit is due, this already makes it better then our previous entry in this series(Lage Zwaluwe station) since this station is actually viable for people in Brecht to use. The frequency at this station is also not that bad. During weekdays you get the Eurocity to and from Breda(and beyond Rotterdam) once per hour and a local train directly to Antwerpen as well. Meaning that during weekdays there is a train to Antwerpen Central station every 30 minutes and a train to the Netherlands once per hour. In the weekends this local train doesn't go and you instead just get the international train making an hourly frequency in both directions. Personally I always find that too infrequent to be really practical but hourly trains are the norm in many European countries and I am admittedly spoiled when it comes to this. 

Schedules on Google maps

 

On paper has Noorderkempen a lot going for it. It's close to a local town, frequent trains and the station serves as a hub for local buses. However there are a few issues with the station that prevent it for me to be a really useful station to use on a regular basis. First off we have to talk about the location of the station. Noorderkempen is situated smack dab in the middle of nowhere with just the small town of Brecht located east from it. This is nice if you live in Brecht itself but if you live in any of the towns or villages in the region then reaching this station becomes more of a chore. Unlike the Netherlands(where cycling to places is a viable option) is Belgium not the greatest when it comes to it's roads. While this region has for Belgian standards very good bike roads suffers this region also from the way most towns have historically been built. You see in Flanders a lot of smaller towns and villages are historically what I would call in Dutch "lintbouw"(line built). Basically what this means is that most villages are built around one main arterial road where most traffic flows through. Now this is not an issue on it's own however it does come with a few logistical challenges if you factor in modern traffic. Most places in this region are pretty old so most of these roads were built to accommodate traffic that historically would have passed through(think about things like stage coaches, horse and carriage etc). While the roads have been modernized with asphalt and the like does this mean that the road width is still pretty narrow. Couple this with modern car traffic and you have a recipe for congestion. 

Widest road in Flanders

 

Which brings me to my next point, the bus. One thing Noorderkempen does better then Lage Zwaluwe is the fact that it serves as a big hub connecting more then a few regional bus lines. The main issue here is however that all of these bus routes are infrequent and unreliable. De Lijn(the Flemish bus company) is infamous for being underfunded and sadly this really limits the usefulness of the transit system in place. Buses tend to go through all manner of places and bus stops are everywhere(even in places where you don't expect it like random bus stops next to fields) however the system is undermined by bad frequencies of at best once per hour and often with gaps between hours. Buses also often get stuck in traffic due to the aforementioned 'lintbouw' so the direct connection between train and bus that should be seamless is hampered by unreliability and with the low frequency this often means that for every bus or train you miss it adds an extra hour to your travel time. Quite frankly this makes it unsuitable for me to use this transit system on a daily basis. 

 

Electric Hybrid bus of De Lijn that is sadly not a Trolleybus

When it comes to facilities is Noorderkempen a mixed bag. There are ticket machines for both bus and train(though good luck using them if you have 2 minutes to make your connection). According the NMBS/SNCB website is the station manned though I have personally never seen that.  There is quite a large bike parking station with bike racks but it is unmanned and not monitored which makes parking your bike here a risk(bike theft is probably the most common crime in the Netherlands and Belgium). There is also a pretty big parking facility for cars. Which I think says something about the way they want people to move to and from the station. I have seen no food stalls or vending machines. Toilets are available(though paid only which is par for the course for Europe). 

 

Noorderkempen is strange because it serves as a massive central point for regional transit, train and bus. It fails at this however not so much because of the station itself but rather because it is failed by the infrastructure around it. It serves quite a dense area in terms of population but the frequency of both the trains and the buses really does not reflect this. Call me spoiled and entitled if you want but an hourly bus and an hourly train is honestly too infrequent to be useful on a daily basis. If you want people to take transit then you want transit that is both frequent and reliable and both the buses and trains at Noorderkempen are neither. The international train from the Netherlands to Noorderkempen is notorious for being late, causing you to miss your connection and the buses that are supposed to feed passengers into the station often get stuck in traffic or get cancelled. In both cases you miss your connection and you have to spend an hour at least waiting for the next train or bus. This is far from ideal if you want to commute somewhere. In the case of the bus has the situation actually gotten worse in recent weeks. De Lijn has taken a slice out of their bus schedules with some of the buses not really reaching the more northern towns and villages during certain parts of the day. Meaning that at best you have to walk a long distance to the nearest bus stop that does still get hourly buses(dodging cars and tractors along the way because rural Flanders is not exactly the most walk-able part of Europe) and at worst you are reliant on a "flex" service that doesn't work half of the time. 

 

De Lijn Flex marketing image

I think the big elephant in the room here is the subject of cross border public transit in general. Putting my cards on the table here but due to personal events am I currently living in a situation where I live very close to the Belgian/Dutch border. I live in Belgium but for my work/study do I often have to do stuff in the Netherlands several times a week. I've found to be quite frank the public transit to be inadequate and too unreliable to do this and as such am I often relying on someone driving me to the Netherlands. This is not great but I am left without much of another option(I can technically bike to the Netherlands but that is a 25km journey and with my executive functioning issues and energy supplies is that not really viable for me to do several times a week).  I think the transit in this region has really good bones but it is hampered by the poor decisions of the Flemish government. 

Cross border public transit in general has been mediocre in Europe. The region I currently live in is not unique in this regard. Places that should have direct bus or train connections across the border are often lacking in this regard. In my case I think that a direct bus to Zundert(or Breda) could be a lot more useful in this regard. However there is no political will in either the Netherlands or Flanders for something like that. Which means that instead I have to make a detour via Noorderkempen instead.(There is technically another option that involves switching to a Dutch Arriva bus in Meersel-Dreef but the Dutch bus in question has a tendency to not show up here and being stuck in Meersel-Dreef is even worse then being stuck in Noorderkempen. It also only runs from 09:00 to 18:00 during weekdays meaning that it is already not a viable option for me in the morning). 

The Alternative route

In the end this means that I am not really sure what to make of Noorderkempen station. I will probably use it again in the future, but only for days out during the weekend when I don't have to get somewhere at a certain time. I don't really see how else we can use the station and the transit system in place here. If we want to improve this system then the only thing I can think off to fix this would be to increase the frequency of both the bus and the train. This would mean that even if you miss your connection the impact would be lessened because you would not have to wait as long for your next bus/train. I think a region like this(where most people depend on their car to get around) could benefit a lot from more frequent buses in general since it would make it actually more viable to use them. People are only gonna take transit if it is frequent, reliable and cheap. Now the cheap part is something that De Lijn has covered since Flemish buses are pretty cheap(2.50 euros per hour, which is a lot cheaper then their colleagues up north) and recently did they lower the Eurocity on the stretch Breda-Noorderkempen from like 13 euros to 4.50 euros so using that train is a lot more viable now in terms of price. There are bus stops everywhere and the bus also covers a lot of ground. They just need to increase the frequency and reliability. Getting more people to take the bus also means less cars on the road and therefore less chance of the bus getting stuck in traffic. The Noorderkempen region is pretty dense with towns and villages often being decently close towards each other so this would improve the quality of living in these places, especially for those with lower incomes, the elderly or disabled people who happen to live here. 

In the end I do want to improve the transit situation in this region but it is not in my hands to do so. It requires both the Flemish and Dutch governments to cooperate with each other and to make those connections happen. Maybe a grassroots movement can be set up in places like Hoogstraten or Brecht but I genuinely don't know how big such a movement will be. With the recent installation of a right wing Flemish themed Belgian Federal government are the chances of this pretty grim. Who knows, maybe one day I will be able to easily cross the border using transit, but not today.