Bridges

The new Southern concourse bridge in Redfern Station will provide accessible access to all above ground platforms within the station. Redfern is one of the busiest passenger stations on the Sydney Trains network and contains more active above ground tracks that all other stations apart from Central Station itself.

Redfern Station as a site contains numerous constraints that are completely unique within the rail network including: ten above ground electrified bi-directional tracks, four island platforms built throughout the life of the station, narrow platform construction to suit track curvature and no access to 'all-track' possession configurations.

Numerous construction methods, structural forms and construction sequences were investigated for the bridge to best meet the site constraints, construction program and the final design requirements of the project and the Client. Over the life of the project, various scoring and weighting criteria were applied to the options to guide the options selection process.

Precast concrete, while potentially not considered to be the most aesthetically pleasing construction material, the innovation and refinements applied to the precast concrete girder types, weights and support locations and final bridge structure configuration provided the necessary flexibility, redundancy and speed that the project required to be successfully built.

This paper describes in detail the constraints of the site, the design development and construction staging, and the final arrangement selected to bridge across all ten live tracks within Redfern Station.