Brussels Metro Line Map and Next Train Countdown

A companion piece to the official map (Dec. 2012, 3 stars) on the platform at Rogier station. The look of this map marries with the official map quite well, showing an admirable consistency in application.

Rogier station itself is clearly shown with a nice big arrow and stations before it on the lines are clearly indicated against greyed-out route lines. There’s also a nicely legible countdown for the next two trains, indicating their route number (2 or 6), final destination and estimated time in minutes to arrival. It even looks like the position of all the trains on the line headed in the same direction are shown on the strip map as bright red lights. Now you can see where that train you just missed has got to without you!

The only thing this map fails to show is the circular nature of the routes that the station serves. Routes 2 and 6 form Brussels’ “circle line”, and the two terminus stations for Route 2 — Simonis (Elisabeth) and Simonis (Leopold II) — are really just two different levels of the same Metro station.

(Source: Ian YVR/Flickr)

Official Map: Brussels Metro, Tram and Rail Network

Having touched briefly on the Brussels map with this previous post, I thought it was time to take a proper look at the current official map.

Have we been there? Yes, back in 2003, but I walked pretty much everywhere and didn’t use the Metro/tram system. I did catch trains from Brussels to other cities in Belgium, however.

What we like: The treatment of the Metro part of the system is excellent, with a nice solid 90-degree angle design really accentuating the orbital nature of lines 2 and 6. Strong, yet interesting, choices for the route lines seem to be aimed at maximising contrast between adjacent lines: the lines are paired in colours that are opposite each other on a colour wheel (blue/orange and purple/yellow).

The map still looks nice and clean despite the bilingual French/Dutch labelling required for many stations.

What we don’t like: The map is less impressive when it comes to some of the design choices made for the tram network - the yellow used for line 7 is so pale that it needs to be outlined in grey, which then makes that line look visually too strong. Line 7’s treatment at terminus stations is also inconsistent with all the other lines: its terminus dot sits above the station marker like the others, but its route line lies underneath the station.

An inconsistent approach to naming stations for the tram routes: most of the stations that don’t interact with the Metro system remain nameless, except for a few on the eastern part of Line 7… why are these stations different to the others?

The pastel striped main rail lines take quite a bit of  getting used to: the effect does reduce their importance in the information hierarchy, but it all just looks a little 1980s after a while. 

Our rating: If it was stripped back to show just the Metro, this would be a wonderfully strong map. As it is, each subsequent mode reduces the visual focus of the map and ends up as a slightly unsatisfying final product. Stilll very competently done, however. Three stars.

(Source: Official STIB website)

Brussels Metro Map Changeover, April 2009

Here’s an interesting pair of photos from 2009 that show two in-car strip maps that co-existed on Metro trains in Brussels. Together, they show the changes in the system that were occurring with the opening of track between the Delacroix and Gare de l’Ouest stations.

Apart from a new look to the map, the system itself seems to have been overhauled completely, with the previous lines “1A” and “1B” becoming “5” and “6”, amongst lots of other changes. Note also the four languages used on the informational stickers: French, Dutch, English and German!

(Source: Daniel Sparing/Flickr)

Metro Mapping, Brussels

(Source: anders.rorgren/Flickr)

Official Map: Belgian Railways Network

Following on from the previous post about Luxembourg, here’s another nationwide system map that resembles a subway map, this time for Luxembourg’s neighbour, Belgium - the land of beer, frites and Tintin!

Have we been there? Yes, during my European jaunt in 2003. I caught trains from Brussels to Ghent, Ghent to Bruges, Bruges to Ypres and Ypres back to Brussels.

What we like: Nice simplification of a relatively complex network. Major hubs are treated particularly well, especially Brussels - which is actually pretty clear even without the inset.Colour is used nicely to provide differentiation between adjacent route lines and zones (which don’t correlate to Belgium’s provinces, as far as I can see).

What we don’t like: The strange placement of elements on the page really detract from the map. The nationwide map could be larger, and the Brussels inset needs to be boxed in and highlighted better.The corporate branding in the bottom right is very average indeed. Orange is a terrible colour for a gradient effect. Awful treatment of the coastline and ocean.

Some odd route choices which may be technically accurate, but don’t help the map to read better. An example of this is the 12 route out of Antwerpen-Centraal, which loops all the way around Antwerp to the south and east before heading north through Antwerpen-Luchtbal towards Amsterdam. This may be what actually happens in real life, but do we need to see it on a simplified diagram to understand where the train goes?

Our rating: Solid effort, let down by some poor page layout. 2.5 stars.

(Source: Official Belgian Rail website)