New road bridge across railway

[Clutters]

Hi, I am new to this forum so apologies if I am in the wrong place.

I am looking for information with regard to costings for building a new steel span bridge across a 30-35m span of railway line. Bridge will carry 2 lane HGV's and incorporate pedestrian crossings.

Costings should include online and offline ramps.

Bridge obviously needs to be 5M high.

Could anybody here direct me to a website with a cost calculator on it where I just need to input dimensions and the calculator works out the budgetary costs.

I know that I would need to go through contractors etc but all i need right now is a budgetary price.

Thanks in advance for your patience, knowledge and understanding.

Regards


Clutters

 

[GRALISTAIR]

Welcome to the Forum.

 

[Joseph_Locke]

Hi, I am new to this forum so apologies if I am in the wrong place.

I am looking for information with regard to costings for building a new steel span bridge across a 30-35m span of railway line. Bridge will carry 2 lane HGV's and incorporate pedestrian crossings.

Costings should include online and offline ramps.

Bridge obviously needs to be 5M high.

Could anybody here direct me to a website with a cost calculator on it where I just need to input dimensions and the calculator works out the budgetary costs.

I know that I would need to go through contractors etc but all i need right now is a budgetary price.

Thanks in advance for your patience, knowledge and understanding.

Regards


Clutters

You won't find a calculator, and in the UK your rail headroom needs to be at least 5.7m.

(The information below is given in good faith and it should not be assumed to be correct. I recommend that you consult a professional cost consultancy such as http://www.franklinandrews.com/

The last one I had any involvement with and that fitted this description came out at the thick end of £7m, including all the normal markups and costs.

 

[najaB]

I know that I would need to go through contractors etc but all i need right now is a budgetary price.

I don' t know of any website that will give you what you're looking for, but this bridge cost £3.5M, so consider double that your starting point.

 

[Haydn1971]

At my last form I did some cost benchmarking for Sheffield City Region Investment Fund using Spon's and a few recent projects.

For a structure to carry a two lane road built in RC with pre-cast beams you are looking at a cost range of £350-500k for spans between 12-22m, going up to spans in the 20-40m range £350-750k - Bridges start getting very disproportionately costly above 40m

The big costs come with embankment approaches - 8m high by 200m long, 1:25 ramp is £1.1-1.4m, add to that the road cost, £1.05-1.275m per km in urban environment, statutory undertakers equipment may need moving, does it need lighting. Add to that a junction at one of the ends of the bridge - simple signals £200-500k, multi-arm signals, £0.5-1.5m, gyratory up to £3m, a roundabout £0.4-0.7m.

Then you have optimism bias at 22% for a pre planning stage bridge, inflation adjustments, design fees, preliminaries, contingencies etc....

Putting it into perspective - a project I've recently been involved in to replace a simple S2 road over four tracks of railway without much embankment work is currently coming in at £11.5m

 

[Waddon]

There's a bridge similar to what you describe currently nearing completion on the line between Bognor Regis and Barnham stations in Sussex. If it is a publicly funded structure then I'm sure whichever local authority it falls under would probably have had to publish details of the cost somewhere, if not I'm sure you could find out who it's being built for and contact them, they may not want to go into specifics but I'm sure they could provide a ballpark figure

 

[Ploughman]

Is this for a real situation or is it for a College project?

 

[bluenoxid]

In addition you may also want to consider timescales. You won't be starting next week. So you may also want to consider inflation.

 

[Joseph_Locke]

Also, what kind of railway does it span?

If you need an all-lines weekend possession of one of the main lines (WC, EC, GW, etc.) near London for lifting in the deck, it could cost you £2m-£4m in TOC and FOC compensation costs too, without any possession access you may need to build the abutments or modify the OLE (if required).

Don't forget that, ideally, your abutments should be 4.5 (we use 4.6 as bridge engineers are notoriously bad at second-guessing the Pway) metres from the nearest running line so that you don't have to bother with impact loading: for a standard two track railway that's a minimum clear span of 14m and for a fully compliant four-track line is either 39m (two sixfoots and one tenfoot) or 40m (one sixfoot and two tenfoots).

If you are loading the ground near the line, piling or dewatering you will also need to put in place track geometry monitoring and possibly protective TSRs; if you want to avoid the latter you'll have to make your clear span wider to move the works out of the "track support zone". Signal sighting issues may force you have a greater span, as will any known proposal to widen the railway in the future.

You may also need a greater soffit height to deal with existing or proposed autotransformer cables.

Lastly, if you want NR to maintain the bridge, they'll make you prove why it can't be concrete, so they don't have to paint it. at those spans I'd be considering a composite deck with weathering steel.

I don' t know of any website that will give you what you're looking for, but this bridge cost £3.5M, so consider double that your starting point.

... and that's just a footbridge!

 

[jon0844]

This bridge near where my parents have an office took a LONG time to build and cost over £2m. That's also just a footbridge, but look how long the ramps need to be now - with 'resting' points along the way.





(The bridge is in Cheshunt, Herts by the way).

 

[Bald Rick]

This bridge near where my parents have an office took a LONG time to build and cost over £2m. That's also just a footbridge, but look how long the ramps need to be now - with 'resting' points along the way.

View attachment 23203

View attachment 23204

(The bridge is in Cheshunt, Herts by the way).

Which crossing was that?

 

[jon0844]

Here:

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.7...6&ll=51.708029,-0.023196!7i13312!8i6656?hl=en

(As you'll see, this Streetview image is before the bridge, which opened last year and was probably under construction for quite a bit of 2013. I'd say it was about a year.).

 

[Bald Rick]

Ah, Cadmore Lane. I'm afraid that was my idea.

 

[dbmbridges]

It's really difficult to give a cost for a structure as it really does depend on so many variables.

A lot of these have already been touched on by others previously.

Land both permanent land take for the abutments and the approach roads + temporary for compounds and building the bridge - for cranes etc can be very costly (this i would suggest is one of the big factors why the MMLE project has been "paused" as the land access issues and costs are huge).

I'm looking at a bridge very similar to the one you are describing - and £3 to £4 Million for the bridge and £3 million for the approach works wouldn't be unreasonable. A few years ago i worked on Leeds Inner Ring road and that was about the cost - link below shows what you get for that sort of money -

http://www.dbmbridges.com/Project-17-North-Road-Bridge.php

The clearance on that one was 5.4m (and it's future proof as HS2 - when and if it ever gets to leeds will pass under this structure (so the plan on the HS2 website says))!!

The form of construction is also important - weathering steel is often a good option as it has reduced maintenance costs (as it doesn't need painted) - Steel parapets (H4A generally 1.8m high) - but some RAM's prefer Concrete parapets - this can create an installation issue as it makes the edge beams really heavy to install.

In short it i difficult to give anything other than a guess - without having more details - if it's a serious inquiry can i suggest you speak with the Network rail outside parties team (the bridge above was done as a third parties project) sure they will be able give you some assistance.

 

[jon0844]

Ah, Cadmore Lane. I'm afraid that was my idea.

It's a very nice bridge. Amazing even. Shame it's full of dog **** on account of the dog 'play area' on the other side, and somewhat inconsiderate owners that let their dogs foul the steps, ramps and the overbridge.

But that's not the fault of the bridge!

The foundations for the ramps never cease to amaze me though. It's as if there's a plan one day to build a skyscraper above the bridge, or maybe another Westfield...!

 

[richa2002]

This bridge near where my parents have an office took a LONG time to build and cost over £2m. That's also just a footbridge, but look how long the ramps need to be now - with 'resting' points along the way.

View attachment 23203

View attachment 23204

(The bridge is in Cheshunt, Herts by the way).

Is that bridge some kind of joke? What an absolute monstrosity.

 

[jon0844]

I suspect that modern standards mean that if there's no lift, that's the type of ramp you'll have to build.

It does seem a little over the top, which is a common comment from everyone who has seen or used it. The cost also shocked a fair few people, but of course everything on the railway costs serious amounts of money.

I bet the OP never expected to be hearing about bridges costing £2-10m plus!

 

[najaB]

Is that bridge some kind of joke? What an absolute monstrosity.

It's what is needed to get DDA-compliant access. Either that or lifts.

 

[kieron]

I suspect that modern standards mean that if there's no lift, that's the type of ramp you'll have to build.

It seems like an odd place to try to replace a level crossing with a bridge to me, when there are so many other level crossings nearby. In particular, it looks to be pretty close to the Windmill Lane level crossing. Does anyone know if you can get from one to the other easily enough on both sides of the railway?

I'm wondering if it would be quicker to walk to the road, cross the level crossing, and walk back on the other side, than it would be to climb over this bridge.

Obviously, the level crossing could be closed when you get there, so you have to wait or climb over a lot of steps anyway, but I don't know how much of an issue this is here.

I suppose at least the new bridge is an option for people in wheelchairs for if the level crossing sticks closed.