There’s no better example of a community hub than a well-developed urban or suburban train station. It can be a meeting place, an essential conduit and a place where people come together to connect with places, family and friends. A well-designed station makes a community.
Today’s major urban train station has become so much more than a functional facility that bookends a journey from A to B. It’s a mixed-use lifestyle precinct which commuters, tourists, office workers, hotel guests, tenants, shoppers and passers-by rely on.
A successful over-station development (OSD) doesn’t just happen. The people who use it need to feel understood. They need to feel safe and comfortable as well as know their available dwell time before travelling. They need to feel that their needs are met. For us, building services engineering’s first stop is people.
Meeting the needs of passengers, and the surrounding community, increases business for a station development and, importantly, the number of people who choose to travel by train. This, in turn, helps to enhance the community by taking cars off the roads, improving air quality and making roads safer. It also contributes towards a less stressful, more engaging commute.
How can building services enable amenity?
Key elements to making a transport hub work are the interconnectivity between heavy rail, light rail and non-rail assets, including retail, residential, commercial and alternative transport modes. This integration encourages use across public transport and spend across local amenities, helping to enable a community.
Accessibility
Design should be inclusive and promote accessibility for all, including people with disability, the elderly and families with young children.
The Rooty Hill Station Upgrade project was part of accessibility upgrades that aimed to provide a better travel experience for customers.
Acoustics
Hard echoes create an unpleasant atmosphere and make it hard to hear. Station acoustics can also help mask train movements, especially noise from braking mechanisms as trains enter a station.
The impacts of poor acoustics include poor audibility of AV systems, difficulty talking and hearing and increased stress levels.
Audio visual
Quality audio visual (AV) systems, that are intelligible from all parts of the facility are essential. Call points and induction loops for people with hearing difficulties are also integral to good accessibility design. AV also plays an important part in interactive wayfinding and enhancing the overall user experience.
Connectivity
Strong and reliable wi-fi connectivity is essential to enable data availability, travel and amenity assistance apps and to connect with family, colleagues and friends while on the move.
Lighting
Lighting enhances legibility of signage, facilitates uninhibited movement for people with a vision impairment and increases a sense of comfort and safety for passengers.
Creative lighting designs can also be used to highlight points of interest, provide intuitive and interactive wayfinding and enhance the overall passenger experience.
Communications and technology
We live immersive digital lives. People use apps to buy tickets, check if the train’s running on time, work on-the-go and connect with friends. Reliable wi-fi is essential to provide the connectivity and convenience we all expect while on the move.
Similarly, real-time updates – fed through a multitude of channels – are the norm. An easy-to-use ticketing system fosters uptake of services, especially with unfamiliar or irregular travellers. Digital ticket systems enable quick and convenient travel from home to a destination while providing the security of having a ticket stored in your phone.
Technology needs to meet current expectations as a minimum and be future proofed, where possible. It also has the potential to enhance the passenger experience, provide frictionless travel, streamline operations and improve efficiency.
Passenger experience can also be enhanced with real-time travel data and information exchange. This allows people to plan their use of station facilities based on available dwell time.
Electrical
Electricity powers our world and how we travel within it. A resilient and reliable power network is vital for keeping the trains moving, people working and the amenity operational.
Installation of a robust low-carbon power supply for the station development needs to consider electrification, renewable energy and transport growth. It also needs to accommodate the opportunity for integrated solar photovoltaics where possible, for example in covered car parks and transport hubs.
Hydraulics
Reliable hydraulics infrastructure keeps station amenities, such as toilets and drinking fountains, working. Water supply and drainage systems are also essential for food and beverage tenants onsite as well as for dispersal of rainwater and keeping platforms dry and comfortable.
Smart sensing technology can also optimise toilet amenity cleaning regimes based on occupant usage patterns. This is an important aspect of attracting the general public and improving footfall and dwell time for passengers and visitors using the station facilities.
Mechanical
Mechanical services design helps to improve occupant comfort in enclosed and semi-enclosed spaces within a station development.
As part of the Crows Nest Design Consortium, we’ve been responsible for the design stage delivery and construction phase services for the mechanical, cable containment, communications, security, fire protection, hydraulics, acoustics, fire engineering and sustainability services for Crows Nest Station, Sydney, Australia.
Our team successfully challenged a number of the onerous scope of works and technical criteria requirements, including a relaxation in the design ambient conditions for comfort applications, and minor deviations to the environmental conditions (air velocity coverage) on platforms.
Temperature
For a major urban OSD with a commercial and retail offering to attract passers-by, office workers or guests from an adjacent hotel, spaces need to be kept at a comfortable temperature.
When we get the temperatures right in and around the retail units – in all weather conditions – people are less agitated, more likely to linger, grab a bite to eat and spend time in the space. Comfort is equally important in transiently-occupied buildings as it is for permanently-occupied facilities such as offices.
Underground developments have different challenges. The design of efficient systems in underground stations and buildings are an important factor in attracting travellers and ensuring passenger safety.
Air quality
Ventilation needs to be carefully considered to ensure dirty air from trains and equipment is removed and air quality on the platform and in the station is kept clean and pleasant. By maintaining good air quality we:
- help reduce the spread of communicable diseases, for example colds, flu and respiratory infections
- make stations more comfortable for those sensitive to poor air quality, for example asthmatics
- decrease fatigue which results in headaches, stress and even people dozing off and missing their stop
- boost productivity for commuters
- reduce stress and anxiety associated with poor air quality
- lower exposure to pollutants that trigger allergies
- provide a cleaner station environment.
Security and safety
If people feel safer in the station, they’re more inclined to use the transport system, shop or visit the cafes and restaurants within the station development. This increases revenue for operators, retailers and tenants. And, the more people that congregate in these stations, the safer they become.
Fire engineering
Performance-based fire engineering is an imperative to ensure all building functions are considered – and protected by the right level of fire-rated structure – and the flow between shops, restaurants, trains, and more, is integrated.
Ease the pain for fire safety on rail projects
Fire engineering on rail projects can be complex. When done right, the approvals process is streamlined and pain free; the station development is safe, compliant and practical to operate and maintain; the user experience is optimised; and all commercial and retail opportunities are maximised.
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Smart building technology
Smart building technology can enhance CCTV systems in several ways. These include integration with access control, behavioural analysis, facial recognition and automated responses. Smart bike lockers can offer peace of mind for cyclists with biometric security, encouraging more sustainable transport and increasing revenue.
Lighting
Well-lit trains and stations reduce incidents and petty crime as well as making people feel safe.
Sustainability
Communities are demanding more sustainability in every aspect of the built environment.
Passive design
Passive design can make spaces more comfortable to be in. Orientation, light wells and window placement can maximise daylight in a space. Shading and wind screens improve comfort by keeping out unwanted weather.
Designing the station layout to take advantage of natural ventilation could include positioning windows and vents to promote airflow, making people more comfortable and encouraging them to spend more time in the station.
Renewable energy
Installing a green roof over enclosed building elements offers natural insulation, improves the enclosed building’s thermal performance and helps manage stormwater runoff. This could be combined with photovoltaic panels to offset the power used in station operations. (These would need to be located away from overhead power lines for safety and maintenance.)
Circularity
A circular approach should also be encouraged for all aspects of station design from building materials to recycling rolling stock components at end of life.
These initiatives, and more, can really help a community get behind a development so they want to use it, for more than catching a train.
Prefabricated design
On the Metronet Byford Rail Extension project in Perth, Australia, our design maximised the use of prefabricated and standardised components for increased site safety and construction efficiency with minimal material waste and disruption.
From a construction safety perspective, prefabrication extends to rail track installation, viaduct and overhead rail line structures for the elevated track sections as well as standardisation of building components within the stations and precinct.
Making the amenity a destination in itself
The success of a rail network is measured by the number of passengers that use that network and its associated amenity. If you go to a relatively small railway station in a town in rural France, for example, there will be an adjacent cafe that’s teeming with local customers and commuters. Many of these customers aren’t there for a train. Instead, the station has become a focal point – a place where people come together.
By meeting the community’s needs, a station can develop spaces that people want. Spaces that connect people to places and suburbs to cities. This is likely to increase train travel and use of alternative modes of transport.
Development opportunities above and adjacent to the station offer small businesses the chance to be seen and jobs for the community, fostering economic growth. They may even unlock new residential developments and enhance the surrounding area.
Local planning guidelines are evolving to unlock these new development opportunities.
Designing a station to evolve with the community
A well-considered train station – with a well-designed over-station development – can provide a more comfortable, predictable, safe and cost-effective means of travel than the likely alternative, driving. It can simplify a passenger’s day with added amenity; reduce traffic on the roads with uptake in public transport; and enhance the community with better facilities, safer public areas and more visitors.
As building services engineers with decades of experience in rail, we approach station design as we would any other development. A station, and the amenity that surrounds it, needs to satisfy the needs of the people who use it, today and in the future. Interactions and journeys should be frictionless. Sustainability should be at is core. It should attract passengers, passers-by and visitors. It should promote a low-carbon commute and be a low-carbon destination.
We encourage developers and designers to think about how a station, and the precinct that surrounds it, can be a beacon for the people who use it. Does it have the potential to solve everyday problems, change behaviour, improve someone’s day or foster economic growth? Can it regenerate an area and become a destination in itself?
