FINDING HEEMSKERK RAILWAY station is still something
of a problem for people who are not locals. The station stands at the
end of a broad, local access road that comes to a dead end, far from the
village heart and the last bus stop, and it is hidden behind the De Wit
supermarket. Though this station offers excellent connections with Haarlem
and Amsterdam, at first sight the railway platforms most closely resemble
the loading bays for the supermarket in front of it. The station exudes
no grand status, and for the moment there seems to be no change in the
offing, given the fact of the omission in linking the station to the new
residential area with 8,000 potential train passengers that is being built
right next to the railway line. Bureau Venhuizen carried out a study into
the reasons for Heemskerk station’s current status, and stumbled
across an accumulation of apparent coincidences.
On the municipal map of Heemskerk anno 1950, one notices that the railway
line passes in a broad curve around the historic village heart. Since
the 1950s, however, the village expanded rapidly towards the railway line.
Heemskerk’s expansion began by linking up with the expansion area
of the neighbouring municipality of Beverwijk that was adjacent to the
railway. This left a void between the old heart of Heemskerk and the new
expansion areas that was filled in during the 1970s and ’80s. With
the construction along the railway line there was occasion to connect
the new neighbourhood to the rail network by means of a station. The station
was built in 1969 in accordance with the current trend of the so-called
‘combi-station’, where a variety of functions are accommodated.
The station became part of a newly built supermarket, and Dutch Railways
(NS) was assigned a corner of the building as a ticket office. The station
is accessed via the Euratomsingel, a four-lane local access road that,
extending as a roadway parallel with the railway track up to the boundary
with Beverwijk, was meant to be part of the neighbourhood’s main
access infrastructure. The road was never extended, due to protests from
Beverwijk, and since 1965 it has come to a dead end on the municipal boundary
just behind the station
Because of the isolated position of the station, in the intervening decades
there have been efforts to find opportunities to improve the use and thus
the status of the station. For example, there were plans for construction
of a bike shed with a workshop, the extension of the Euratomsingel, the
re-use of unused parking places, the placement of a florist’s kiosk
and a mobile snackbar, and the construction of offices. For various reasons,
in the end not one of these initiatives was realized. Even with the restructuring
of the Lessestraat in 2004 the station area has not been included, at
least for the moment. The ultimate opportunity for the station to command
a central place in Heemskerk presented itself in 1991, when the Broekpolder
on the other side of the rails was designated as an expansion site for
Heemskerk and Beverwijk. Suddenly the station no longer stood on the edge
of the built-up area, but right in the middle of it, at the spot where
the new neighbourhood could have been linked up with the existing construction.
The station could have become a hub for many different modes of transport,
the ideal location for shops and offices. In one fell swoop, the station
could become the ideal centre of an urban area and bid farewell to its
moribund status for once and for all.
Eventually not a jot of the massive potential of the station found its
way into the planning process around the Broekpolder. What’s more,
because of the complete lack of a link with the new urban area, the station’s
isolation was merely confirmed. While drawing up the plans, there was
indeed consideration of the possibility of realizing new shopping facilities
around the station in order to satisfy the needs of the future residents
of the Broekpolder. However, the choice fell on a shopping centre in the
middle of the new neighbourhood in order not to create competition for
the existing shopping facilities on the Europaplein. As an office location,
the station area had already been dismissed. And the realization of live-work
properties along the railway line, as included in the original plan for
Broekpolder, was supplanted during the planning process by houses that
were more opportune in the prevailing housing market.
The traffic circulation studies for the new residential area are a whole
different story, and turn out to be an exceptionally complex matter. In
1994, at least 15 models were made with different access variants. Many
of the models are favourable for the station, such as the extension of
the Euratomsingel as originally intended, a (multilevel) junction near
the station and good access to the Broekpolder side. Influenced by a diversity
of factors – archeological sites, the traffic levels on existing
roads that was primarily watched closely by local residents, the fear
of traffic taking short cuts between motorways and existing built-up areas
– a traffic scheme that hardly took the station into consideration
was eventually agreed. This blueprint was decreed in 1997 in the Urban
Remit. This basis for the urban masterplan did recognize the significance
of the station for the reduction of car use, partly by increasing the
frequency of trains to four per hour. The station was honourably mentioned
as the future junction in a ‘bicycle highway’ network between
Heemskerk and Broekpolder, but was given no credit for this in the traffic
circulation scheme.
Accessibility
The Broekpolder enjoys good accessibility. Heemskerk’s NS railway
station stands right next to the neighbourhood. Through traffic can travel
to and through the neighbourhood via an extended Hoflaan (in Heemskerk)
and an extended Laan der Nederlanden (in Beverwijk). Furthermore, cyclists
and moped riders can reach the centres of Beverwijk or Heemskerk via the
NS station. It remains unclear whether Broekpolder will have a bus service.
Even in the further progress of the planning process, the significance
of the station was paid little more than lip service. In succession, the
prospectus by the building consortium in 1997 (realize the synergy
between the different elements: station, park and shops), the Visual
Quality Plan of 1998 (the station area is part of the central area
of the Broekpolder, which interconnects local traffic routes) and
the 1999 Broekpolder zoning plan (an effective route for public transport
from and to the station from many locations in the district must be safeguarded)
all underscore the significance of the station area. In the planning process,
all that remained was a level crossing, which because of the anticipated
increase in train frequency could not be realized. The greater frequency
of trains is therefore partly to blame for the inaccessibility of the
station from Broekpolder. Three tunnels were indeed built to provide access
to the new district, but all at some distance from the station. Through
traffic passes in a wide curve around the station; this also holds for
local traffic. Most train passengers come on foot or by bike, but even
for them the station is inaccessible. From the perspective of the new
neighbourhood, the station stands on an island, as if it were only car
drivers who live in the homes of the Broekpolder.
For about a hundred years the railway line swung in a broad curve around Heemskerk and bypassed the village. Now that the railway line has been completely swallowed up by the development of Heemskerk, it is the turn of the village to bypass the railway and the planning process makes a great loop around it. In 2004, a good decade after the designation of the Broekpolder as a location for expansion, Heemskerk’s station still stands there in isolation: in the margins of the existing construction, hidden behind the supermarket at the end of a dead-end road, only accessible from the Broekpolder side via a plank set nonchalantly across the railway drainage ditch, with the risk of a wet suit to boot. There is now some effort being put into access to and from the Broekpolder via provisional access to the platform. Perhaps this point of access marks an end to the series of missed opportunities to imbue the station with a new status and 'de Ladder', the section of the Broekpolder adjacent to the railway line, will not only gain the allure of a 19th-century station area, as can be read in the urban masterplan, but will also profit from the vitality that is proper to a station of the 21st century.