GAUTRAIN

SPECIAL REPORT: GAUTRAIN

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An interactive engineering feat

By Bev Hermanson

Ask any yuppie in Gauteng what would be the most important convenience to have to be able to cope in the fast paced city life of the area and you’ll most likely get: “you have to have a reliable car. Without a car around here, you’re pretty much stuck!”

BUILT ENVIRONMENT > Get yourself jammed in any one of a hundred daily traffic snarl-ups on the roads in Gauteng and look around you.

Most cars have a driver, but no passengers. Car after car will whiz by you – one occupant, one occupant, one occupant – everyone rushing to get somewhere. Mixed amongst them, overloaded taxis take chances, skip robots and clog up intersections. Pedestrians hover on the verges of the streets, waiting to catch a lift. It’s all quite precarious.

The good news is that this is about to change – for the better. It’s been a while in the making, but a number of stakeholders in Gauteng got together and have come up with a scheme that, once all the various elements slot into place, will make a tremendous difference to the way things are done in the province. Understanding that urban sprawl was one of the culprits, a plan was set in place to encourage densification of the population

around public transport routes. This should reduce traffic congestion, pollution from exhaust fumes and the extreme pressure on road maintenance from the sheer volume of traffic that uses the road networks.

What is required to make this successful is reliable and safe public transport.

A further consideration motivating the upgrading of the province’s public transport is the belief that the cities across the world that have the largest economies, such as London, New York and Tokyo, offer efficient public transport systems. Somehow, the two seem to go hand in hand. In fact, the recent trend is towards the establishment of 24-hour hubs where people work, live and play.

An integral part of the scheme to upgrade the public transport for both Johannesburg and Pretoria is the R25billion Gautrain Rapid Rail Link project. Conceptualised

Construction of the in-situ balanced cantilever deck sections for Viaduct 5 at John Vorster Avenue.

BUILT ENVIRONMENT > back in 1997 as part of the Blue IQ social upliftment initiative, the Gautrain is destined to have a resounding impact on the entire province, changing the way people choose to live, how they get around and even where they choose to work. Covering 80km, with ten stations, including a station at the OR Tambo International Airport, the Gautrain has been pretty much designed to appeal to all those single occupant commuters that have been contributing to all the traffic congestion.

“The strategic objectives were divided into four groups – to ease congestion on the road networks; to promote the image of public transport; to promote BEE (Black Economic Empowerment) and socio-economic development; and to change the shape of urban development in Gauteng to that of transit-oriented development,” explains Dr Herman Joubert of the Gautrain Project team.

For the people involved in piecing this project together, it’s been a most amasing experience. Amongst the public, there was a lot of skepticism and negativity to begin with, but as the plans have gradually been transformed into reality, there has been a distinct shift in sentiment.

The prime objective has certainly been realised as, so far, 11 700 direct jobs and over 60 000 indirect jobs have been created. There has been a dramatic increase in the number of companies, joint ventures and enterprises established to cope with the demand for engineering and construction expertise and supplies, many of these are Black Economic Empowerment and SMME initiatives. Unfortunately, due to the brain drain, some of the engineers had to be called back from retirement, but on a more positive note, a total of 37 construction professionals that had left the country to work overseas, have returned home to participate in the project.

Top: The Gautrain being tested in Midrand.

Centre: aerial view to the west of Viaduct 5 and Centurion Station.

Above: Construction of the underground Rosebank Station platform.

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Choosing the sites for the stations The siting of the stations has certainly generated enormous interest as property developers and hotel groups jostle for prime positions nearby. Each of the stations was chosen for the unique contribution that it would make to the area surrounding it. “One of the questions we had to ask was: When passengers disembark at the airport, where do they go?

Through our research, we found that the majority of airline passengers that visit Gauteng have a destination in the Sandton area. Once we had established that, it was just a matter of connecting the dots. We had to include central Johannesburg and central Pretoria, in support of the drive to revitalise the CBDs. Hatfield, north east of the Pretoria CBD is a potent area, with Aerial view of Park Station.

its proximity to the university, Loftus rugby stadium, the CSIR, business district and the many embassies in the area. Centurion and Midrand are rapidly expanding areas, Rosebank is another important business and residential hub, Marlboro is situated right next to an N3 interchange and Rhodesfield is a residential suburb that had been earmarked by the Ekurhuleni municipality for redevelopment due to its location close to the airport,� Dr Joubert adds.

Facilities that had to be incorporated at each station include provision for other forms of public transport, such as buses and taxis and parking for commuters as well as transfer from existing rail services at Park, Pretoria, Hatfield and Rhodesfield stations. There is an emphasis on pedestrian traffic and access control and the development of pedestrian-friendly areas.

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Gautrain System Identity To be people-friendly, a transport system must be easy to understand and to determine the system identity, consultants took a look at historically successful transport operations, such as the London Underground, which was given its first system identity in 1916. The Underground route map was introduced in 1933 and has been used by visitors and locals on a daily basis ever since.

The first element that had to be determined for the Gautrain was the colour palette. This revolves around metallic gold (or the CMYK print version of metallic gold), silver, cool greys, coffee brown, fish eagle white, ivory, various shades of blue and, where necessary, safety yellow.

Concept image of the look and feel of the train.

A Gautrain System Identity Manual was drawn up, covering the aesthetic design of the five major elements of the project – civil structures, stations and depots, finishes and colours, landscaping and environmental management, and the corporate identity, signage and information systems.

The theme chosen as the symbol for the Gautrain aesthetic is the acacia tree. Resting under a tree was seen as a significant part of a journey, in the days before sophisticated transport was invented and in general, trees are respected as sources of protection and nourishment. In Africa, trees are also symbolic places where communities gather for worship, to barter goods and to enter into social interaction. The progress and development symbolised by the Gautrain is combined with the static icon of the tree, anchored in the past, identified in the present, but with the vision of the future.

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Top: Park Station entrance.

Top: Rosebank Station entrance.

Planning the stations

follow the general guidelines – the two elements of the architectural design that have to permeate throughout all structures are the wavy roof reminiscent of the top formation of the acacia tree and the trunk and branch structure of the tree. These elements are applied to the station buildings, bus shelters, parking facilities and even the emergency shafts.”

A consortium of architectural practices was formed to establish the architectural guidelines for the structures. The firms that came together are Bentel Associates International, Siyakha Architects, and TPSP Architects, to form the Gautrain Architects Joint Venture (GAJV).

One of the main consultants involved in developing the guidelines is architect, Tom Steer. He was involved in many of the preparation stages before any of the tenders were awarded and has been intimately involved in the conceptualisation of the stations. “Each station has a macro and micro influence that we had to consider,” he says. “The Gauteng province’s motto is ‘strength in diversity’ and we decided that each station should have its own theme to create some interest for the commuters. The themes, however, must still

Above: Sandton Station entrance.

The themes chosen for the stations celebrate the diversity of cultures in South Africa as well as the wealth that we enjoy in terms of resources, technology, financial strength, our history, our political standing in Africa and our people. They are: › Park Station – people, mining and gold; › Rosebank – commerce and retail; › Sandton – finance and investment; › Marlboro – music, art and culture;

Above: Marlboro Station exterior.

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Midrand Station.

Rhodesfield Station.

› M idrand – the meeting point of Africa and the gateway of Gauteng;

in the country that we could use. We wanted to achieve a modern look, but using African colours, art and sculptures, based on what would normally happen under Acacia trees.”

› Centurion – sport; › Pretoria – rail history;

“The overall aesthetics had to be holistic, though,” Steer continues. “South Africa had a bad history related to rail transport architecture and there were no precedents

The GAJV opted for a two-tier approach to determining the finishes for the ten stations. Sandton and the OR Tambo terminal station would be given choice finishes as these stations carry passengers on the premium express service, while the other stations would be given more durable, standardised finishes. As the Gautrain stations are mostly large ‘park and ride’ facilities subject to high volumes of pedestrian traffic, there was a danger that the facilities could become sterile and unfriendly. The counter to that was to create opportunities for people to linger, such as at the entrances

Pretoria Station.

Hatfield Station.

› Hatfield – academic life and the youth; › Rhodesfield – industry and technology; › O R Tambo International Airport – a tribute to the elders of the nation.

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Centurion Station.

and in plazas where water features and seating create an air of calm and peace.

The station buildings are designed to be as transparent as possible, but canopies have been incorporated, using the tree concept, to shield the glass from the solar heat and provide shelter during the rainy season.

OR Tambo International Airport Station.

“The concourse floors are all tiled with terrazzo tiling.

The walls are segmented into low, medium and high impact sections, according to height. The lower section, which is subject to the highest impact from trolleys and luggage is covered with heavy duty polished porcelain with polished granite skirtings and stainless steel impact rails. We paid a lot of attention to developing

BUILT ENVIRONMENT > tactile ground surface indicators that can be used by mobility and visually impaired people and of course we made sure there are ramps and facilities for the disabled,” says Steer.

Building the tunnel Of the total 80km of railway dedicated to the Gautrain, 15km is underground, linking the Marlboro station via Sandton and Rosebank, to Park station in the centre of Johannesburg. To look at the exacting task of boring and constructing the tunnel, Tony Boniface of GIBB, a tunnelling specialist was appointed to the Province team. Boniface, who had then recently returned to SA having been involved in the construction of the Taiwan High Speed Rail (THSR) project, was well qualified to look at the proposed methods of tunnel construction for Gautrain. The THSR line is almost 400km long and Construction of the Johannesburg Park Station tunnel.

needed some 50 tunnels with an aggregate length of nearly 50km.

“For Gautrain traditional blasting and drilling methods were used for 12km of the route. This method makes it possible to employ a large number of teams working simultaneously on several fronts which speeds up the whole process. For the remaining 3km, the contractor chose to use a highly specialised tunnel boring machine (TBM). Unlike other TBMs that have been used in Southern Africa previously, this one had to be able to cope with the soft decomposed granites between Rosebank and Killarney,” explains Boniface.

With a rotating cutting head at the front of the machine, the Earth Pressure Balance TBM, as it’s known, bores through the ground, and as it does so it mixes the excavated material with chemicals to form a ‘gunge’ with the consistency of toothpaste. This toothpaste

BUILT ENVIRONMENT > like material is removed from the cutting chamber via an Archimedian screw, to be discharged behind the pressurised head of the machine, so as to ensure no loss of pressure within the head chamber where the disc cutters are housed. The ‘toothpaste’ is then fed onto and along a conveyor belt to the surface, to be carted away to a spoil site. As the TBM moves forward, a host of ‘services’ have to be extended – including compressed air, electrical cabling and lighting. The ground in front of the TBM had to be kept under constant pressure to stop it collapsing. Once a day, the disk cutters had to be inspected and the crew had to go through a sea diver’s type of compression/decompression chamber, to reach the pressurised head chamber.

At all times, the ground had to be supported and as the TBM moved forward the permanent tunnel lining consisting of a precast concrete segments had to be erected and secured within the tail shield of the TBM.

The concrete segments used for the tunnel ‘wall’ were all made by Southern Pipeline on the East Rand. “The moulds were made in Europe, but we produced all the segments here. Accuracy was very important. We had to produce them within a millimeter of the specs,” says Steve Delport of Southern Pipeline.

Due to the changing nature of the subsurface throughout Johannesburg, geological studies were an integral part of the excavation process. Desk studies were first conducted, based on data extracted from the city council’s geotechnical records. The information was then revised on an ongoing basis while the construction was underway, so that the correct techniques could be applied to each area. “Between Sandton and Rosebank, the ground was hard granite and here, the tunnel is between 40m and 20m below the surface. But then moving from Rosebank to Park station became a challenge because the centre of Johannesburg is actually quite

Inside the tunnel boring machine, looking towards the exit of the tunnel.

BUILT ENVIRONMENT > a lot higher than Rosebank. When we got to Killarney, we had to introduce a gradual incline,” says Bonniface. “We wanted to keep the gradient as flat as possible, so we had to bore as close to the surface as we could. This means that, in some places, the tunnel is between 10m and 12m below the surface.”

Although they tapped into the expertise of the mining industry, the approach to the tunnel construction had to follow a different set of guidelines. “In mining, production is paramount, so speed of excavation is the aim. For us, the longevity of the structure and public safety are paramount. The structure has to be built correctly first time because once the trains are running, maintenance can only be done for a few hours at night,” Boniface adds.

places, the tunnel houses only a single track, so synchronisation of the carriages, that will run every 10 to 12 minutes at peaks times, is reliant on a signal monitoring system that operates in both directions. Contingency plans in the event of any breakdowns or problems, included the positioning of seven emergency shafts along the tunnel route. Where the tunnel is deep below the surface, safety chambers have been created, where passengers will be able to congregate to wait for the emergency services to fetch them. Where the tunnel is shallow, the emergency shafts have stairs, so that passengers can get themselves up to the surface. The positioning of the emergency shafts was very much dependent on providing safe accessibility for the emergency services to reach these points and operate

The design of the tunnel involved more than the geological and elevation considerations, though. In many

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The tunnel from Rosebank Station, at Emergency Shaft 5.

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Aerial view of the viaduct approach towards OR Tambo International Airport Station.

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Public relations With all the heavy engineering work going on, it would have been easy to lose focus on the involvement of the public and the need for them to ‘buy’ into the concept. In the beginning, when the Blue IQ initiative was launched and the notion of a rapid rail link was first mooted, there was much skepticism. One of the tools that has been used to counter that and to keep the public informed and involved, is the Gautrain website.

The Gautrain wbsite.

“At one stage, we worked shifts, 24/7, so that we could counter the negativity,” says Ingrid Jensen, who is part of the Gautrain PR team. Two of the components offered to the public were a ‘route planning’ tool for road commuters who may encounter road closures and detours due to the construction, as well as a map that shows property owners where their properties are situated in relation to the Gautrain route. For the latter, an erf number is needed, to identify where the property is. This enables residents to determine how much they would be affected by the construction and, later, how close they would be to the convenience of using the rail service. They could further register to receive road diversion information via e-mail or sms as part of the trip planning tool, or enter a starting point and destination point to receive details of the best route, taking into account traffic congestion and detours.

“The bottom line for the design of the website was interactivity,” explains Jensen. “We started a newsletter, called the Gauteng Rapid Rail Roundup, that links to the website and we developed a section for children and teenagers.” One may ask why the youth need to be drawn to the website – the response – “these are our commuters of the future. They need to feel comfortable with using the Gautrain.”

Kids’ Station, as the youth website is known, has content that has been custom-designed to appeal to the younger age groups. This includes Gautie News, games,

The website provides useful route planning tools.

BUILT ENVIRONMENT > puzzles, competitions offering Gautrain branded prizes, a Study Buddy and My Train that is aimed at Grade 10 and 11 pupils. “For the Gautrain construction, we had to tap into the expertise of the older generation. These skilled people won’t always be around. The aim of bringing in a youth element to the site is to stimulate interest in skills development in the disciplines involved, because in 20 years’ time, we will still need those skills,” says Jensen.

“Especially when learners reach Grades 10 and 11, they have to make decisions about their careers. This is when they have to choose subjects and we wanted to build an interest in science, technology and engineering. We have explained some of the careers that have been involved in the building of the Gautrain.

So, for instance, there would be an explanation of what it means to be a town planner and what it means to be an engineer, etc.”

The My Train website.

Advertised regularly in Mini Mag and National Geographic Kids, the Gautrain youth site is further promoted on social networks such as Facebook and Twitter, as well as Wikipedia, with links back to the site. The social network aspect of the site has been expanded over the years and now there are blogs that have been added, such as the History Blog, where members of the public are able to post their own experiences during the construction phase. As the Gautrain becomes operational, they will be able to add their commuter experiences as well. These can include photographs and video footage and the blogs can even be accessed via Facebook and Google mail, to make it easier.

Over and above the public involvement and information aspect, the Gautrain website is used for internal communication. This entails a private access facility with dedicated user names and passwords, so that staff can receive alerts, information and notifications about the progress of the project.

The website, therefore, has been a pivotal tool in the entire process, one that is taken very seriously by the

The Gautrain Kids’ Station website.

BUILT ENVIRONMENT > operators. “We monitor everything that is said about Gautrain on the web, in blogs and in Wikipedia,” says Jensen. “We also contribute, so that we have established a significant presence for the brand and the project. We track the statistics, so we know that, for instance, currently we have 1200 fans on Facebook and 700 to 800 followers on Twitter, amongst others.

We drive quite a lot of traffic from these other sites to our own website and, on average, we are seeing between 900 and 1000 hits per day.”

Conclusion

become a giant project for the province of Gauteng – one that will be spoken about for decades to come, for its construction intricacies and contribution to socioeconomic development in South Africa. The negative perceptions bandied about in the early phases have been turned on their heads as the engineering feats and overall design conquests have risen head and shoulders above anything so far accomplished on the continent. The Gautrain Rapid Rail Link will change the face of society as we know it in the province and be a strong driving force in achieving a global place for the cities of Pretoria and Johannesburg as worldclass African cities. <

From a ‘small train project’ thought up back in the late 90s, the Gautrain Rapid Rail Link has grown to

All images courtesy of Gautrain.

Construction of the multi-level underground Sandton Station and parkade, October 2009.