Brussels North overtakes South as busiest station

North Station in Brussels is now the busiest in the country, taking over first place from South Station, according to the national rail authority SNCB.

Last year North Station (pictured) saw a weekday average of 63,104 passengers, an increase of 8% on the year before. That came on top of a 24% increase recorded in 2014. At the same time, South Station saw a 1% increase in traffic, while Central saw a slight decrease. SNCB could suggest no definitive reason for the change.

After the Brussels’ stations, the next busiest in the country are Gent-Sint-Pieters, with 55,817 passengers on a weekday, and Antwerp Central with 33,614.

Another station to see a big increase in passengers was Brussels Airport, which grew by 7.2% in 2015 to an annual total of 4.2 million passengers. The station was unavailable for a few weeks earlier this year after the bomb attacks in Brussels Airport. The station is likely to grow further this year, with the opening of the new connection to Brussels Schuman.

The least busy train station in Flanders was Aarsele, near Tielt in West Flanders, which saw an average of 24 passengers a day in the course of the year. The quietest in all of Belgium was in Hourpes, Hainault province, with nine passengers a day on average.