Work has started to install a brand-new type of footbridge at Stowmarket rail station.
Stowmarket station is the first in the country to have the first-of-its-kind accessible ‘AVA’ bridge, which includes fully-operational lifts.
Greater Anglia received funding for accessibility improvements at the station under the Government’s Access for All scheme as the only step-free way to cross the platforms currently is via the level crossing.
The £5.5 million project to install the ‘AVA’ footbridge will see the existing concrete footbridge removed and replaced.
Enabling works are now being carried out to the platforms in readiness for the new bridge.
A temporary footbridge will be installed, and the existing bridge removed, over the weekend of 11 January 2025 while the line is closed for engineering works so that the station can still be used while the new bridge and lifts are being installed.
It is anticipated that the installation of the ‘AVA’ bridge will commence at the end of May 2025.
Passengers are advised that while the work is being carried out, the number of parking spaces in the car park will be reduced as some of it will be needed to be used by the project team.
The new bridge is a modular design, which is cheaper and quicker to construct. Lifts will be built into the bridge’s design, making it much easier to travel between the platforms.
It is designed to be more attractive for passengers, more reliable and easier to maintain than traditional designs. Built of stainless steel, it’s designed to be long-lasting and doesn’t need to be painted.
The modular design and ‘plug-and-play’ lifts are designed to cut the installation time needed on site by over half, which is much better for passengers and neighbours.
Marek Dowejko, Greater Anglia’s Asset Programme Manager, said:
“Thanks to this revolutionary new style of bridge the scheme was affordable, and we have been able to use the Access for All funding efficiently and to the best outcome for passengers. We want everyone to be able to have a good journey with us and the plans for Stowmarket are going to make a big difference to people using the station.”
Network Rail’s head of buildings and architecture, Anthony Dewar, said:
“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.”
Chris Wise, Senior Director at Expedition, the Lead Designer and structural engineer for the ‘AVA’ Footbridge, said:
“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. ‘AVA’ changes the landscape: from customised one-off construction to automated, efficient and industrialised manufacture. Saving the taxpayer money, saving lifetime carbon, manufacturing infrastructure products that are super-fast to build, beautiful to use, optimising the process and the product every single time one is made.” “
Designed by ARX, the company behind the movable roofs at Wimbledon, the lifts are designed to be easier to install than traditional designs and provide built-in resilience and redundancy, to avoid going out of service.
Darren Falkingham from ARX said: “A footbridge with lifts is vital for persons of reduced mobility, but only any good while the lifts are working. When a lift goes out of service, that’s more than an inconvenience – it’s enough to stop people from travelling altogether. We applied our knowledge of safe and reliable moving structures to engineer a lift with a strong, curved stainless steel door and two drive motors per lift. And for rapid installation, the plug-and-play design is fully tested and certified at our factory, with a complete lift module delivered to the station platform. In fact, when the prototype was built, the lift was operational in just five hours of arriving at site, start to finish.”
Phil Webb from Walker Construction, said:
A good design can be enough to make you feel good about your journey, to make you feel safe and welcomed, but a great design will do all that and be easy to install, cheap to maintain, and have the reliability to give people the certainty they can make their journeys hassle-free.”
‘AVA’ is part of the TIES Living Lab programme and was created by a consortium of Network Rail, Expedition Engineering, Hawkins\Brown, McNealy Brown, ARX and Walker Construction, with funding from Network Rail Research and Development and Innovate UK. The prototype was constructed by McNealy Brown in their Sittingbourne site.
Stowmarket station’s ‘AVA’ is set to be open in the summer of 2025.
Image credit: Greater Anglia
