Analytical study reveals structural integrity of pedestrian bridges under cyclic loads at transportation hubs, suggesting adherence to CSA S7-23 guidelines.
Pedestrian bridges serve as important pieces of infrastructure in urban environments, facilitating the safe movement of people across busy roads and other barriers. With the growth of cities, increase in urban density, and therefore the continuous growth of pedestrian traffic, understanding the structural integrity of pedestrian bridges under the full range of possible loading conditions is of critical importance. The research presented in this paper focuses on the fatigue analysis of pedestrian bridges under cyclic pedestrian loads. In the presented analytical study, high volume pedestrian load events are simulated, corresponding with the arrival of trains at a busy public transportation hub. Train volumes and arrival frequencies are varied, and the transportation software PTV VISSIM is used along with a bridge influence surface to simulate pedestrian traffic flow and establish the load effect ranges and frequencies needed for fatigue assessment. The transportation hub used as an example in this study is a train station at the outskirts of Toronto, Ontario, which is connected by a pedestrian bridge to a nearby parking facility. Due to traffic volume uncertainty, the CSA S7-23 pedestrian, cycling, and multiuse bridge design guideline takes the approach of establishing a design stress range below which the fatigue life can be assumed adequate over the service life regardless of traffic volume. The results of this study show that the CSA S7-23 design stress range, which corresponds with a cyclic live load of 0.85 kPa, is on the safe side for the investigated structure.
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Park et al. (2025) studied this question.