A new prototype footbridge based on artworks and working models has been built to full-size with working lifts, in a showcase to give clients and contractors the chance to try out the facilities before they decide on a bridge of their own, while also highlighting how this particular type of bridge can be built.
Named AVA, this accessible bridge is crafted to appeal more to passengers, offer greater reliability, and require less maintenance compared to conventional designs.
Constructed from stainless steel, it is built to last and eliminates the need for painting.
The bridge has been exhibited in Kent for approximately a month, allowing numerous railway colleagues, potential clients and contractors to examine the bridge and fully appreciate its dimensions.
The inaugural design to be constructed on the railway network will emerge at Stowmarket station next year, courtesy of Greater Anglia.
The prototype on display in Kent provides an excellent representation of the scale, as well as the simplicity of use and installation. Its modular design and plug-and-play lifts aim to reduce the required on-site time by more than half, significantly benefiting passengers and local residents.
AVA is a component of the TIES Living Lab programme, developed by a consortium including Network Rail, Expedition Engineering, Hawkins\Brown, McNealy Brown, ARX, and Walker Construction, with financial support from Network Rail Research and Development, and Innovate UK. McNealy Brown constructed the prototype at their site in Sittingbourne.
“You can look at models and drawings but there’s nothing like using the lifts, walking the stairs and feeling the scale of the full-size bridge to make you realise how good this design really is. We want to give passengers better journeys and provide a railway that’s better value for money, and to do that we need fresh designs like this.
We want a bridge that is open and light so passengers feel secure, a bridge that looks modern, that makes people feel they’re travelling on a modern railway, we want lifts to be more reliable, and our colleagues want a bridge that’s easy to maintain, that can be installed more quickly and less disruptively… and also doesn’t need painting every 25 years! That’s why we have AVA.”
Network Rail’s head of buildings and architecture, Anthony Dewar
“The station received funding in 2019 for accessibility improvements under the Government’s Access for All scheme as the only step-free way to cross the platforms currently is via the level crossing.
Marek Dowejko, Greater Anglia’s Asset Programme Manager
“Of all the good things about AVA, to us at Expedition, the most exciting is how AVA signals the future of infrastructure manufacture. AVA demonstrates through its lean design, low carbon form how the industry can evolve: and not just in bridges and lifts. “
Chris Wise, Senior Director at Expedition, the Lead Designer and structural engineer for the AVA Footbridge
ARX, the firm responsible for Wimbledon’s retractable roofs over their tennis courts, have designed these lifts to be simpler to install than conventional models, ensuring they have inherent resilience and redundancy to prevent service disruptions.
The AVA bridge will be added to the Network Rail design standards catalogue alongside other innovative designs like the Beacon and Flow bridges. The inaugural Beacon Bridge has been unveiled in Garforth, near Leeds, and will soon be complemented by the installation of lifts. While the first Flow bridge on the rail network was opened in Shropshire back in January 2023.
Responses
I live just outside of Stowmarket, and at long last we are to get a decent footbridge and more importantly proper lifts at the station. But, how about fitting a raised roof to both the staircases and the bridge just to finish off the facility, apart from that, good news all round.
For a company that made its name putting a roof on a structure to keep the weather out, it’s a shame that they didn’t think to apply that same strategy to the bridge. We need to do a lot more to provide passengers protection from the elements at stations. An open footbridge and a platform with nothing more than a single bus shelter is totally inadequate.
What about other stations including Diss and Marks Tey that would benefit from having new footbridge with lifts or ramps and to replace the concrete footbridge. And other Greater Anglia stations to get the upgrade to become step-free accessible.
What an ugly tin piece of rubbish. It looks horrible. Why can’t we just have our traditional railway footbridges ? They are far more aesthetically pleasing. The whole trend of bare metal unpainted infrastructure has become utterly boring and just illustrates that the railway industry doesn’t care anymore.
Crossing can often be done on the level using red/green signals and an automatic barrier with a white light signal for trains for pedestrians and wheelchairs. That would save on these ugly, overbearing and hugely costly structures.
There is one at Kidderminster, installed ten years or more ago. It has one of these horrible electronic female voices which announces that either ‘you have reached the top floor’ or that’ you have reached the bottom floor’. That will be blindingly apparent given that there are only two floors! When will the patronising powers-that-be stop assuming that we all have the intellectual capacity of a severely retarded four-year old????
If you’re blind then having an announcement what level you are on is very helpful.
If you have impaired mobility – whether you use a wheelchair or not – then a barrow crossing is a poor solution. Wheelchair wheels don’t like the gaps you get in the crossing to accommodate the rails, people who walk slowly may need longer to cross the tracks, and the crossing will be regularly closed when trains are coming through – in particular, at the time when most people need to cross, ie when a train is approaching. That’s why accessible bridges are needed.
Is this the type where the lift goes sideways as well as up and down