Falcon Street Pedestrian and Cyclist Bridge

25 August 2010

Pedestrian and Cyclist Bridge project wins multiple industry awards

Adua Engineering fabricated the steel for the Falcon Street Pedestrian and Cyclist Bridge project, which recently won the XLERPLATE® steel-sponsored Infrastructure & Mining Award at the 2010 NSW & ACT Australian Steel Institute Steel Design Awards. Other significant project contributors were Aurecon, Roads and Traffic Authority of NSW and Reed Constructions Australia.

The project also won the Design Awards' Structural Engineering Steel Building Design Award.

 

The 193 metre long bridge superstructure, which sits over nineteen lanes of the Warringah Freeway in North Sydney, is a 1,500 mm deep, fully welded trapezoidal orthotropic steel box girder structure, curved both in plan and elevation. After an extensive review of options this option was selected based on the:

• ability for the steel box girder to be used economically in long spans as opposed to a concrete or composite section
• speed and ease of erection required
• aesthetic appeal and reduced maintenance specified by the client
• fact that steel box best facilitates the required curved horizontal and vertical alignments.

Specific project constraints included issues surrounding construction access, shallow grades for disabled access, vertical clearance over newly constructed ramps, meeting specific bridge landing points and providing a visually attractive facility within the existing urban environment.

Building the superstructure from steel was key to achieving aesthetic requirements and enabling the construction to be undertaken with minimal disruption to traffic on the Warringah Freeway.

The steel structure has a very high span to depth ratio of 43 which allowed the Aurecon design team to develop an elegant bridge outcome. The combination of a curved horizontal alignment with the repetitive rhythm of the curved steel screen posts adds interest for pedestrians and cyclists.

The span configuration is 15.7 metre, 36 metre, 66 metre, 65 metre and 10.3 metre. The bridge has a 3.0 metre clear width in accordance with AS5100.1 for Shared Use Paths.

The new facilities link regional cycling routes and significantly enhance pedestrian and cyclist safety. The early involvement of the local community through the establishment of a community focus group demonstrated that, from the outset, a focus on customer needs was at the forefront of the project team's thinking.

This impressive engineering outcome innovative design solution was achieved through extensive planning and a strong team spirit from the project team.

Images courtesy of Aurecon.