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Groundbreaking new bridge design could transform rail crossings across the UK
- aliasEli 5y agoThese bridges appear nice, but in their current state they wouldn't be used in the Netherlands, because they do not seem to support bicycles.
- LurkersWillLurk 5y agoThey also don't support wheelchairs, which in the United States would tend to violate the ADA.
- aliasEli 5y agoThat is a much better argument.
- bkor 5y agoThe previous comment was about not handling bicycles in the Netherlands. For the Netherlands it's important that it handles bicycles properly, by being able to cycle. Pushing a bike or getting off isn't an acceptable solution (for NL). Though doubt making it less steep and longer would really be an issue.
- analog31 5y agoThat seems quite reasonable for the NL. At least for myself, here in the States, I'd be happy to push my bike for a few feet rather than have to go miles out of my way or ride on a super busy street to cross a railroad. Of course, if we still had railroads in the US. But crossing busy roads is an issue here.
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- themaninthedark 5y agoLooks like they are aiming to remedy that: >The next phase of the project will include a ramped version of the bridge to support those with impaired mobility.
- varispeed 5y agoThis is so lazy of them. Probably the next phase will drop from the list of priorities and maybe come back if there will be too much noise in the media. They should begin with the design having disabled people in mind. I hate when some people are being treated like second class citizens.
- themaninthedark 5y agoI understand your feelings but engineering is an iterative process, what they created here was a prototype with 3 goals: - Lower cost - Quicker install time - Aesthetics Now the team can go back with the lessons they learned and modify the design. One thing I noticed upon a second reading is how much they were emphasizing the remote monitoring capabilities. >is that the bridge will feature built-in monitoring to monitor usage and maintenance needs. The cynic in me reads this as yet another step in cutting staff for inspection but it may possible that they are planning on deploying this style bridge to more rural locations where there may be unofficial crossings of hiking trails.
- varispeed 5y ago> - Lower cost - Quicker install time - Aesthetics The disability issue is orthogonal. You either develop with it in mind or just ignore it and hope it will go away at a later stage. This is wrong!
- chrisseaton 5y agoI feel like a lot of people are commenting without much context. These bridges are for legal footpaths. They’re usually in the countryside. The paths aren’t maintained they’re just a legal right of way through the countryside and they have a legal obligation to put a bridge so as to not obstruct it for people on foot. It’s not like a trail as in the US. The paths aren’t even remotely wheelchair accessible for miles either way they’re usually mud. You would have to climb over stys to get to the bridge. The bridge would be the least of your problems.
- gsnedders 5y agoAnd the point of this is to be able to close high-risk at-grade crossings of the line, especially those with relatively poor sight lines or where the necessity to maintain sufficient sight lines is an impediment to increasing the line speed.
- coryrc 5y agoIt wouldn't matter. In (most of?) the US, anything you so must meet all the latest code, so if you aren't rich you line in a tent (I'm exaggerating slightly, but you are forbidden from a building a 1970s car, house, etc)
- chrisseaton 5y agoFor example is the Appalachian Trail ADA compliant?
- coryrc 5y agoIf the government built a train station on the middle of the trail, then they would literally be required to build ADA-compliant ramps down to the mud.
- chrisseaton 5y ago> If the government built a train station on the middle of the trail I don't understand why people are so deeply muddled about this. There is no train station. It's for bridges over the railway in the middle of nowhere, far from train stations, along country footpaths. You cannot traverse the footpaths on a wheelchair, so you cannot even get to the bridge in the first place.
- tialaramex 5y agoThe most necessary pedestrian bridge near me has what look like metal gutters running up and down the stairs. In fact they mean when you dismount a bicycle it becomes fairly easy to go up and down the stairs pushing your bicycle. The at-grade crossing there is closed for up to 40 minutes per hour, because the railway carries both freight (to/ from a major port) and passenger trains. If you're in a vehicle too bad, "Long Queue. Turn Engines Off" as the signs say but if you're on foot the bridge means you don't need to care too much about that. You might be wondering: Why isn't there a road bridge? It's an industrial estate, so any road bridge needs to carry large goods vehicles, articulated trucks and so on, which means a fairly large concrete structure with up and down ramps occupying a large footprint and there's nowhere to put that. It's also next to a tidal river, dig down and it'll flood, further into the city they just tunnelled the entire railway under the park, but that is not cheap.
- chrisseaton 5y agoWhy would you expect to be able to bicycle over a footbridge? They follow footpaths. You shouldn’t be cycling on a footpath. They’re for people on foot. It’s not a bridleway or cycle path. Clue is in the names!
- CyberDildonics 5y agoAre there separate "cyclebridges" ?
- fy20 5y agoIn the UK a "footpath" is a legal right of way for people on foot. It's often muddy, goes through fields with animals, and there usually are many gates or stiles [0] you need to cross. You probably could cycle over parts of it, but some of the footpaths near where I grew up are even hard to walk as the hedges between fields are often overgrown. You only have the right to walk along a footpath, any other use - including cycling - without the land owners pernission is considered trespass. Often they are hundreds of years old, so any new construction needs to allow the public to cross over them. When I was growing up, one of my neighbours did a lot of research into footpaths in the area, and uncovered a lot of forgotten footpaths. Some of them even went through people's back gardens, and as they were legal rights of way, they had no choice but to open them up (apparently there's a way to move them now for cases like this now). [0] https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/stile https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/stile
- chrisseaton 5y agoHow do you imagine you would get to this bridge with a bicycle in the first place?
- CyberDildonics 5y agoWhat bridge are you talking about specifically?
- chrisseaton 5y ago
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- fredley 5y ago> Fibre-Reinforced Polymer So plastic? Might look shiny now, but I wonder how these will look after 20 years of sunlight and other weathering.
- brudgers 5y agoPossibly less of an issue than elsewhere as they are for the UK.
- Scene_Cast2 5y agoThe white boats and yachts that you see are typically glass-fiber-reinforced epoxy, and they seem to be holding up just fine. "Carbon fiber" products are CFRP (carbon fiber reinforced plastic), where the composite matrix is fibers in epoxy, and those look fine after decades as well.
- nickserv 5y agoThe amount of work that goes into maintaining a yacht far exceeds the financing available to public infrastructure. Of course, bridges are not normally sitting in salt water. Either way I'm not sure the comparison is very meaningful.
- raffraffraff 5y agoGround breaking bridges would be dangerous
- rossdavidh 5y agoGood point! At least they didn't say it was it would "disrupt" rail crossings.
- Someone 5y agoUsing Fibre-Reinforced Polymer for pedestrian bridges isn’t new, is it? A few minutes of googling gives me https://www.fibercore-europe.com/en/projects/ https://www.fibercore-europe.com/en/projects/, which has dozens of FRP bridges. I doubt that’s the only producer in the world. I don’t see what’s special about this one (but feel free to educate me) That leaves the shape. I would guess the corners in the road are there to avoid having to use land that isn’t owned by the railway. If so, what’s left is the specific design. That’s nice, but other nice designs are possible. Now, as to the idea of making a pedestrian bridge over a railway: it’s better than no pedestrian connection, but the stairs on such bridges necessarily are fairly high. Train tracks often lie above ground level, and even if they don’t, the total height to the top of the overhead line, plus some safety, plus the height of the bridge’s deck means you’re easily going two floors up and down.
- stuaxo 5y agoIn the UK pretty much all stations have bridges, so this will mainly be about being able to put them in place much more quickly when you are making changes to a station, or putting a new bridge in somewhere (i.e. there may not be one that's inside the ticket barriers on some smaller stations).
- notahacker 5y agoLooks more like a design for footpaths in open countryside or between housing estates. Stations have a lot more to build around and on even if existing bridges need replacing
- teamonkey 5y agoIf you travel by train in the UK you'll soon realise how many stations are in fact in open countryside or between housing estates
- gsnedders 5y agoNo, these are very much for rural applications, hence why they don't need to include any provision for ramps or lifts (which most new crossings must), given the paths they connect are themselves typically at best a mud track (and often just a scarcely marked crossing of grazing land).
- tomc1985 5y ago"Stunning design" it is not, and what if you're approaching from the other direction? Now you've gotta do this awkward S-shaped motion just to cross the bridge What's stopping this from being incorporated into a more traditional bridge?
- crazygringo 5y agoI'm guessing it's to minimize the space taken up on the sides of the tracks. Train tracks are often next to things, so I assume that's what's stopping it -- not having available space.
- gsnedders 5y agoYes; the current (semi-modular) standard design is typically built as a U-shape for similar reasons. Minimise the span over the railway and minimise land-take on either side (which for the intended application is typically the edges of fields).
- FridayoLeary 5y agowhat's wrong with normal bridges?
- bkor 5y agoThey explained it well enough in the article, not? What's missing?
- snthd 5y agohttps://flowbridge.co.uk https://flowbridge.co.uk
- mc32 5y agoI’m all for new and better designs. I’d just want these proven for all kinds of foot traffic, not just two people crossing it. What happens when teenagers all cram into one, or a marching troop goes over one? I think it wasn’t too long ago a footbridge failed to take into account synchronized steps (marching) and swayed under foot traffic.
- gherkinnn 5y agoCase in point: Albert Bridge in London [0] > Nicknamed "The Trembling Lady" because of its tendency to vibrate when large numbers of people walked over it, the bridge has signs at its entrances that warn troops to break step whilst crossing the bridge. 0 - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Bridge,_London https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Bridge,_London
- gsnedders 5y agohttps://www.networkrail.co.uk/industry-and-commercial/research-development-and-technology/research-and-development-programme/innovative-modular-footbridge-design/ https://www.networkrail.co.uk/industry-and-commercial/resear... contains a whole bunch more about this; see especially the "More information about the footbridge's development" fold-outs at the bottom
- Animats 5y agoNetwork Rail had a competition in 2018 for a new footbridge design.[1] This isn't the winner. It's not even one of the entries. It is, though, much simpler and probably cheaper. [1] https://www.ribacompetitions.com/networkrailfootbridge/ https://www.ribacompetitions.com/networkrailfootbridge/
- Zenst 5y agoIt seems the competition was for station foot crossing designs and this is a design for less urban area's in which you just need a foot crossing and no station. Which would explain why it can accommodate a longer ramp up and down and less rigid in design limitations as you would get in the urban or main stations. So maybe cheaper, though if they was able to use this design in the more urban area's, would certainly have a larger footprint and that aspect may make it more expensive.
- Zenst 5y agoI'm looking at the design and living in the UK, my first thoughts are - BMX riders are going to love this. I'd be interested in seeing it in more detail as whilst the design does seem to possibly be wheelchair accessible, it does seem to have some stepping upon the up and down slops. Though nice design on many levels, feels like the railway foot crossings may leap out of the Victorian era designs into something a bit more tomorrow. Which if you want to see what many footbridges look like - https://www.railadvent.co.uk/2021/03/victorian-footbridge-restored-for-passengers-on-derbyshire-railway-station.html https://www.railadvent.co.uk/2021/03/victorian-footbridge-re... will tick many a quaint and tourist box but for daily use or those less able to climb such gradient stairs, not much fun.
- barbazoo 5y ago> I'd be interested in seeing it in more detail as whilst the design does seem to possibly be wheelchair accessible, it does seem to have some stepping upon the up and down slops. It looks like it's steps on either side, not sure how they're gonna make that wheelchair accessible without dramatically reducing the angle of the slope.
- travisgriggs 5y agoDid anyone else go read the article to see actual train bridges? Like the kind the train drives across? Especially titillated because train bridges have been pretty train bridgey for the last +150 years and the promise of something new was exciting? I feel dumb. And had.
- mikewarot 5y agoThere's zero redundancy in this design... I'd give it a hard pass. If any one of those triangles broke, it would fall, derail a train, and cause a disaster.
- readonthegoapp 5y agoi'm curious what problems these bridges are trying to fix? i guess that current pedestrian bridges are expensive. it makes me think -- wouldn't a crossing at grade (at the ground level) be cheaper? better? allow wildlife to still cross easily? fit more nicely with 'the environment'? i guess having a bridge could be safer. at least statistically. maybe? what's the real agenda? https://www.alamy.com/blaenavon-wales-july-2020-two-people-cycling-over-railway-tracks-on-a-level-crossing-image366946002.html https://www.alamy.com/blaenavon-wales-july-2020-two-people-c...
- chrisseaton 5y agoAre you American? Rail in the UK isn’t like you’re probably imagining. It’s fast and frequent. Level crossings (what we call a ‘crossing at grade’) has historically been a big source of accidents.
- readonthegoapp 5y agoSi Americano I get that UK prob have more competent rail than US (not saying much) But I'm thinking practically You build some huge walkover bridge You build a massive fence along... how long a segment of track to prevent any large-ish living things from crossing it? Kids tear down the fence so they can cross The fence becomes yet another barrier between neighborhoods It's prob super ugly And all of this is done for the benefit of locals along the tracks? No Its done to allow speeding rail commuters access to what is rightfully theirs -- unconstrained ability to haul ass through all these neighborhoods without regard for the safety of the people who live there Slow down the trains? No way -- those are important people on those trains
- darkfirefly 5y ago> These bridges are made from lightweight Fibre-Reinforced Polymer > In just 11 months we have developed a prototype bridge that is stunning in design, environmentally friendly and will take days and not weeks to install and thereby causing less disruption for the surrounding community.” ... How exactly is this environmentally friendly? FRPs don't tend to be recycled easily or cheaply[1], not to mention the fact that they are often derived from oil-based products and require high-temperature curing. [1]: "The recycling of composite materials is on the right track, but challenges still have to be taken-up in order to finally make it a commercial reality" (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0079642515000316 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S007964251...)