This Train Station Has No Business Being This Good

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As one of the architects who designed the station (team Arcadis Architecture NL), many thanks @notjustbikes for your analysis and video of this station. You are interested in Urbanism, but also notice details like the old-new platform canopy detail and the light bike-parking. Yea, I'll excuse the glare of the glass ;). You analyze the problem and solution very accurately and notice many details we've laboured long on to incorporate. Even the temporary station that also took serious effort to design was mentioned! Thanks and I'll definitly look into your channel, it seems like a great way to scratch my urbanism itch now and then ;).

I'm a Dutch architectural engineer and remember having visited this place during the renovation as an educational trip. BAM, the contractor company that got hired to tackle the project, shared some insights into the planning of the project. The hardest part was closing the station for as little time as possible, so they came up with the idea of preparing the train platforms as one solid piece. Which was unfeasible, so they constructed a system where they were slowly building parts of the platforms every day, and slowly wedged the finished part into its place. Whenever a bit of the platform was settled, they would start connecting other construction parts that would slide along, but would not be able to be connected and finished till it was completely done. The entire project took engineers over a decade, and the company had to build a temporary office next to it, where the engineers just worked from during its duration, being able to overlook their brainchild. The contractor company also came up with other new building techniques during this project, which they still apply in ongoing projects.

As a Japanese person, I am genuinely impressed. It's hard for less populated regions in Japan to be doing anything other than slowly withering away, so most of Japan's highlights of public transportation are in the more densely populated areas. The mix of nature, people, and trains in Driebergen-Zeist was eye candy, thank you for the video!

Just a heads up as a Civil Engineer working for a construction company that works on Rail a lot (Strukton): These plannings where you have to do a ridiculous amount in a ridiculous sparse amount of time are par for the course in Rail construction in the Netherlands. ProRail has a contract with NS where the rail is only allowed to be offline for a (very) limited amount of time per year. Dutch Rail construction is one of the most efficient, most time constraint and often most innovative construction possible. I love it.

New York was originally called “New Amsterdam.” If only the Dutch had won, Americans could have this now!

Watching this I realised how spoiled I am as a Dutch person. I visit this station only sporadically, and the first time I visited since the revamp I was like "hmm, is it me or did they revamp the station, 'cause it looks better than last year", and carried on with my day like nothing happened.

This really just solidifies that there's no excuse for miserably bad public transit in my city of 1 million people. Absolutely incredible video

American structural engineer here. Love this! The exposed structure of the train station is really elegant. My great-grandparents are from the Netherlands. So refreshing to see good urban infrastructure. I’d definitely like this to be in the US too. Wish my taxes actually went towards infrastructure like this in the US…

I have quite a bit of knowledge about this station since my sister in law was part of the project on the municipal side. There are good reasons why there is little development on and around the station. They can be summarized as follows: 1. it is surrounded by naturally and historically significant areas that are to be preserved. 2. it is meant to connect the regional populations to the larger cities on the Rhijnspoorweg, not to invite city dwellers to work in the rurality. 3. The renovation was started not to make the train station better per se, but to alleviate the area's position as a chokepoint for intercity trains that got stuck behind sprinters as well as for car traffic moving to and from the highway and between the more rural localities. 1. To begin with, the station is situated at the northern edge of an estate (de Reehorst) comprised of two older historical estates. Both situated along the culturally and historically significant "Stichtse Lustwarande". A "line" of estates where the old nobility and higher middle class would have their outside-the-city homes, many of which have been granted to hospitals, typhoid recovery places, elderly care and asylums for the mentally infirm and others have now become educational or office locations. This makes the south side of the tracks already unfit for large scale development in order to keep the rural/natural character and historical value, while it already has a unique distinct market position on the business use market. On the north and eastern side, most of the land is part of the national forests of the Utrechtse Heuvelrug and thus count as protected nature, including most of the Landgoed Heidestein (another estate). In the westward direction, it runs into more historical estates; Rijnwijck and Wulperhorst. There really isn't much development possible that wouldn't take big chunks of historically, culturally and ecologically significant areas. The area as it is now also separates the local identities of Zeist and Driebergen, a character that the local population is not keen to do damage by connecting the two towns with a "city center". This also distinguishes it from something like Kampen zuid, where the development of the area was already slated to happen as part of a natural expansion of the town. There is of course some development planned, but it won't take the shape of a massive-as-possible urbanized area. 2. The station is mostly meant to service a regional population to go into the city of Utrecht and further into the Randstad or to any of the towns on the Rhijnspoorweg between Utrecht and Arnhem. Given the cost and hassle of using cars to enter big cities, the station is already well-used by commuters. Insofar people from the cities come to this station, they usually come for the natural environment; to walk or cycle in the forests. Therefore, putting the forests further out would be counter-productive. Also, don't underestimate how many rural population the station serves. People come from all the way in Wijk bij Duurstede. It is indeed a true regional hub already. 3. The renovations where started because of the imminent need to alleviate 2 traffic choke points: The rail traffic one where intercities between Arnhem and Utrecht would routinely get stuck behind the sprinters. And the road traffic one where the N225 connection to the A12 highway was strongly congested in part due to the crossing you mentioned in the first part of the video, causing "sluipverkeer" throughout the smaller roads and neighborhoods causing safety issues. This meant that the budget for the renovation far exceeds what would normally be available since many different budgets could be drawn from, municipal, railway, provincial and national (through Rijkswaterstaat). In a sense, the greatness of this renovation follow from the multimodal issues that preceded it. Don't be discouraged though, the solution is well-documented and we will see the lessons learned return in the designs of new stations and renovations of existing ones for decades!

Man, the social safety aspect deserves its own video. So important, and I was surprised (though I guess I shouldn't be) that the Dutch were way ahead of us in this area, too.

Even as someone who isn't knowledgeable in the subject, I can immediately feel how safe and inviting this space is. It's not so clean and high-tech that it feels sterile, rather its homey and almost alluring. A space that you don't mind wandering to even if just for a walk and no other reason. Would be great to see more of this in future infrastructure everywhere in general.

"There are J, J bus platforms" Had me laughing uncontrollably

Love the appreciation the classic Dutch tradition of "Not caring about where you can and cannot park your bike" gets.

As somebody who uses this train station on a weekly basis it is very gratifying to see a huge YouTube channel like this dedicate an entire video to it!

I was part of the projectteam of ProRail and am still very proud of the train station and bus station we build! Thanks for the great video.

Another thing that is great about this station: the NS has a number of hikes on their website where you can walk from one train station to another. They are called an “NS Wandeling”. There is one that starts at Driebergen-Zeist and goes to the next station (Maarn). You walk through a beautiful piece of forest, it takes about three hours (15 km). Walked it a few weeks ago and I can recommend it! NS doesn’t need to offer these hiking routes, but they do. And that’s something deserving of a shout-out!

I've watched this 17 times and I can say, this is definitely a certified not just bikes classic

As a Dutchmen I think the area around the station DZ is probably dedicated nature. Not all stations need to have a build-up area around it. Even if it would be convenient.

With your keen eye on detail, you make this station seem like the best in the world. To me, this was already the case before the reconstruction as my grandpa always took me here to watch trains. This must have been the holy place that inspired me to become a train driver many years later. I hated to see it being demolished, but indeed it is a huge improvement and I am so happy to see the original canopy has returned :-)