After the Liège-Guillemins station, one of his emblematic achievements completed in 2009, the Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava (1) is still at work in Wallonia with the opening to the public on December 18 of the new Mons stationa Belgian town located about thirty kilometers east of Valenciennes. However, its official inauguration is not scheduled until December 31 during the Mons en Lumières Festival.
SNCB – the Belgian railways – thus breathes a sigh of relief, its station starting operations ten years late, originally planned for 2015 on the occasion of the celebration of Mons European Capital of Culture, then in 2018 and 2020. In the meantime, the cost of the building has soaredgoing from €35M for the first project in 2001 intended to replace the 1950s station to €480M on arrival. An additional cost which is controversial in Belgium, especially since this equipment is not very user-friendly by only offering a few seats to passengers waiting for their train.
Faithful to its airy and refined style as well as the white color of its steel structures, Santiago Calatrava designed a footbridge station spanning the tracks, a railway cathedral 165 meters long, 15 wide and 16 high. Its five covered platforms will be used by 189 daily trains, serving Brussels in particular, for traffic of 57,000 passengers per week. Fourteen of its forty arches will accommodate the SNCB commercial agency, that of TEC buses, but also service spaces and shops.
A new multimodal station
Mons station was obviously designed as a multimodal hub allowing travelers to also access the local bus network and at the taxi rank of this town of 100,000 inhabitants. It also has an underground car park, on the Place des Congrès side, and some 350 spaces for bicycles. “ The objective of the SNCB was to make this new station sustainable, accessible and autonomous, a true multimodal platform.e”, summarized Tom Guillaume, the press manager of SNCB.
(1) Known for the creation of the City of Arts and Sciences built in his hometown of Valencia, Santiago Calatrava specializes in the construction of bridges and transport equipment, notably the metro station at the foot of the World Trade Center in New York, the Oculus, and many train stations. Among others, those of Zurich Stadelhofen and Lisbonne Oriente, those of the airports of Lyon, Bilbao and Denver, the Liège-Guillemins TGV station in Belgium.
