WikiProject Belgium/Stations

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Introduction

This page discusses how to map railway stations in Belgium.

Starting in 2023, the national railway company of Belgium, NMBS/SNCB, has an interest in OSM data for improving some services to travelers, especially regarding accessibility data.

There is a fairly good documentation about stations mapping in the dedicated global page about railway stations. Note that, thanks to a collaboration between SNCF and OSM-France, the French version of the page is more detailed. For railway related stuffs in Belgium, have a look at https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/WikiProject_Belgium/Conventions/Railways.

This page is mainly about Belgian-related issues.

Projects launched by NBMS/SNCB

- Nov 2022 - Nov 2023: Evaluate accessibility data from railway platforms in Belgium (done by Champs-Libres coop) and reuse for a train route planner (https://bikeontrain.belgiantrain.be/), made by https://stoomlink.com/.

- May 2023: Investigate multi-level maps for complex stations (done by atelier-cartographique)

- August 2023: A Belgian OSM contributor (GPoilvet) had a paid job for surveying stations and completing accessibility data in OSM.

- September 2023: Analyse the possibility of mapping sub-areas in platforms in OSM. The sub-areas are part of the platforms that are signposted with markers, usually with a letter (e.g., zone A or B). The goal is to guide the traveler to a specific zone.

OSM diaries

There are some articles about how mapping objects accessibility in Belgian stations written on the champs-libres account: https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/champs-libres/diary

Tutorial

A small tutorial is prepared for the project. It focus on railway stations mapping in the Belgian context.

It is available here (in docx). The source in markdown is available here.

Mapping

The hastags #nmbs and #sncb are advised in the changeset comments while mapping for this project.

Stations in Belgium

As of 2023, all NMBS/SNCB stations are mapped in OSM, tagged with railway=station or railway=halt. However, there are also non-NMBS/SNCB stations. See this query.

To distinguish the NMBS/SNCB stations, the operator=NMBS/SNCB tag should be used on every NMBS/SNCB stations. This was completed, as well as official UIC codes (uic_ref) in May 2024.

Accessibility of stations and platforms

Accessibility (by foot, bicycle or for disabled people) can be mapped using various features such as footways, elevators, etc. For appropriate indoor routing, accessibility needs to be mapped around and inside station buildings and to connect platforms.

Here is a list of tags:

By default, these tags apply for pedestrians. For other transport mode, use the tag bicycle=* or wheelchair=*, e.g., on elevators.

Platform markers & main signals

We'd like to map in details the platform, by mapping the platform subareas using the platform marker (eg "A1") and also the main signal for each platform.

For linking the railway signal to the platform (or the track), we added a ref:track=* tag on the main signals.

Checking data

Monitoring changes

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