gautrain
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SPECIAL REPORT: GAUTRAIN 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 > By Bev HermansonTRANSCRIPT
SPECIAL REPORT: GAUTRAIN
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!”
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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 establish-
ment 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 R25-
billion Gautrain Rapid Rail Link project. Conceptualised
Construction of the in-situ balanced cantilever deck sections for Viaduct 5 at John Vorster Avenue.
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back in 19���9���7 as part of the Blue IQ social upliftment ini-
tiative, 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 80��km, with ten stations,
including a station at the OR Tambo International Air-
port, 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 devel-
opment; 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 70��0�� direct jobs and over 60�� 0��0��0�� 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 initia-
tives. 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 pro-
fessionals 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 enor-mous 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 pas-sengers 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
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 munici-pality 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.
Aerial view of Park Station.
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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 Under-
ground, which was given its first system identity in
19���16. The Underground route map was introduced in
19���33 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.
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 aes-thetic 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 nourish-ment. In Africa, trees are also symbolic places where communities gather for worship, to barter goods and to enter into social interaction. The progress and develop-ment 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.
Concept image of the look and feel of the train.
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Planning the stations
A consortium of architectural practices was formed to establish the architectural guidelines for the struc-tures. The firms that came together are Bentel Asso-ciates International, Siyakha Architects, and TPSP Architects, to form the Gautrain Architects Joint Ven-ture (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 sta-tion 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
follow the general guidelines – the two elements of the architectural design that have to permeate throughout all structures are the wavy roof reminis-cent 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.”
The themes chosen for the stations celebrate the diver-sity of cultures in South Africa as well as the wealth that we enjoy in terms of resources, technology, finan-cial 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;
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Top: Park Station entrance. Top: Rosebank Station entrance.
Above: Sandton Station entrance. Above: Marlboro Station exterior.
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Midrand – the meeting point of Africa and the gateway
of Gauteng;
Centurion – sport;
Pretoria – rail history;
Hatfield – academic life and the youth;
Rhodesfield – industry and technology;
OR Tambo International Airport – a tribute to the
elders of the nation.
“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
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in the country that we could use. We wanted to achieve a
modern look, but using African colours, art and sculp-
tures, based on what would normally happen under
Acacia trees.”
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’ facili-
ties 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 oppor-
tunities for people to linger, such as at the entrances
Pretoria Station. Hatfield Station.
Midrand Station. Rhodesfield Station.
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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.
“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 porce-
lain with polished granite skirtings and stainless steel
impact rails. We paid a lot of attention to developing
OR Tambo International Airport Station.
Centurion Station.
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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 disa-
bled,” says Steer.
Building the tunnel
Of the total 80��km 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 40��0��km long and
needed some 50�� tunnels with an aggregate length of nearly 50��km.
“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 ma-chine (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 ma-chine, 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
Construction of the Johannesburg Park Station tunnel.
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Inside the tunnel boring machine, looking towards the exit of the tunnel.
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 com-
pressed air, electrical cabling and lighting. The ground
in front of the TBM had to be kept under constant pres-
sure 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 con-
ducted, based on data extracted from the city council’s
geotechnical records. The information was then re-
vised on an ongoing basis while the construction was
underway, so that the correct techniques could be ap-
plied to each area. “Between Sandton and Rosebank, the
ground was hard granite and here, the tunnel is between
40��m and 20��m below the surface. But then moving
from Rosebank to Park station became a challenge
because the centre of Johannesburg is actually quite
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a lot higher than Rosebank. When we got to Killarney,
we had to introduce a gradual incline,” says Bonni-
face. “We wanted to keep the gradient as flat as pos-
sible, so we had to bore as close to the surface as we
could. This means that, in some places, the tunnel is
between 10��m 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 para-
mount. 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.
The design of the tunnel involved more than the geo-
logical and elevation considerations, though. In many
places, the tunnel houses only a single track, so syn-
chronisation of the carriages, that will run every 10�� to
12 minutes at peaks times, is reliant on a signal monitor-
ing system that operates in both directions. Contingency
plans in the event of any breakdowns or problems, in-
cluded 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
effectively, without disrupting traffic flows and other
activities.
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.
“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 newslet-
ter, 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 com-
fortable with using the Gautrain.”
Kids’ Station, as the youth website is known, has con-
tent that has been custom-designed to appeal to the
younger age groups. This includes Gautie News, games,
The Gautrain wbsite.
The website provides useful route planning tools.
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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 in-
volved, 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 engi-
neering. 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.”
Advertised regularly in Mini Mag and National Geo-graphic 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 so-
cial 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 opera-
tional, they will be able to add their commuter experi-
ences 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 informa-
tion 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 My Train website.
The Gautrain Kids’ Station website.
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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 estab-
lished a significant presence for the brand and the
project. We track the statistics, so we know that, for
instance, currently we have 120��0�� fans on Facebook
and 70��0�� to 80��0�� 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
9���0��0�� and 10��0��0�� hits per day.”
Conclusion
From a ‘small train project’ thought up back in the
late 9���0��s, the Gautrain Rapid Rail Link has grown to
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 socio-
economic 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 world-
class African cities. <
All images courtesy of Gautrain.
Construction of the multi-level underground Sandton Station and parkade, October 2009.
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