Good afternoon everyone,

Welcome to this week’s update and the first for April. A skinny update this week, as there will be a lull in work on site while we head into the Easter Holidays.

There will be no work on site during the holiday period, which also leads into RDO’s on Tuesday 11^th April and Wednesday 12^th April. Crews will be back on deck on the Thursday 13^th of April.

1. Station Roof Works

Next week will see the start of works on the next section of the station roof to be tied into the walls – directly in front of the Botanica driveway. Following the closure of the driveway and the shifting of traffic barriers, crews will begin breaking out the surface with excavators and hammers, before excavation commences down to roof level. In the still open section, works will continue to steel-fix, concrete pour and backfill.

2. Albert Road Reserve Station entrance

This week saw the major concrete pour for the capping beams around the station entrance, while excavation has continued on in the southern section. No new works on site, with excavation continuing next week.

3. Conduit Connection – Anzac Tram Stop

As mentioned, we are just waiting for approval from the power provider before we can cut the power over to the tram stop. There will be a days work to connect the power to the tram stop, at this time the pedestrian lights to cross St Kilda Road to the tram stop will be out of action, but we’ll have traffic controllers in place to get people across safely while the connection works are underway. Still no firm date on this, we are chasing the provider for an answer – as soon as this happens, the temporary generator will be removed from in front of Melbourne Grammar School.

4. Albert Road North Construction

Not too much new to report from Albert Road North, the team are busy with the drainage installation, this remains the key focus. The April construction notice will be hitting letterboxes shortly (I’ve included the new-look map below)

We’d previously flagged that the removal of the parking on the Southern side of Albert Road will happen in April, we’re going to push this back to the 1 May 2023. Not a huge reprieve, but appreciate that everyone would like to hang onto the parking for as long as possible. Once we take the parking, we’ll be closing the pedestrian path and putting pedestrians on a temporary path where the current parking is. That will see excavators roll in and rip up the footpath, ready for new bluestone kerbing to be laid. We’ve gone through and mapped out the building entry points to ensure that access to buildings is maintained. It’s still a little ways off– but a reminder that it will be another big change within the area.

The U-turn at the bottom of Albert Street is also going to be closed in April, the team are going to hold off on this closure for as long as possible, as it facilitates access back up to St Kilda Road. It looks like this U-turn will close in late-April.

5. St Kilda Road median works – South (Nightworks – 13 and 14 April)

The base slab has now been poured for the second of the chiller plant structures (the southern structure) As I mentioned last week, the structural steel and precast work commences after Easter.

In an update to last week’s notification – It has been confirmed that we will be shifting traffic barriers between Barwise Street and Toorak Road overnight on the evening of the 13 and 14 April, but in some further good news on parking – the removal of the parking spaces along this section of St Kilda Road southbound has been pushed back until May.

This traffic barrier shift will allow works to start on the inner lane – One change that will take effect is that you will no longer be able to turn right from St Kida Road into Kings Way until these works are complete later this year.

6. St Kilda Road median works – North – (Nightworks – 13 and 14 April)

Last week we finally managed to get in and complete a tricky section of asphalting at the intersection of Park Street and St Kilda Road.

On the night of the 13^th and 14^th of April we’ll do the works to install new traffic barriers and line mark for the traffic shift into the central carriageway in both southbound and northbound directions. The big change will be the temporary removal of parking on the western side of St Kilda Road. Like the barrier shift in the southern end of site – this will require an overnight shut of St Kilda Road to execute the change.

7. Station box construction

Works are pushing along underground, you may have seen the announcement that we recently laid the very last section of track within the new twin tunnels – and exciting development which paves the way for train testing to commence later this year.

8. Shrine Entrance

The pouring of the blinding layer is underway for the Shrine Entrance and will continue into next week– the blinding layer is the preliminary layer of concrete that will form the working base for the steelfixing and base slab.

9. Park Street to Albert Road

The footpath diversion is now in place between Park Street and Albert Road and the crews have wasted no time pulling up the asphalt and laying new pavers. As I mentioned in our most recent updates, we’ll assess the viability of the trees adjacent to these works. The trees have been marked for removal in the approved plans – however we wanted to first pull up the asphalt and use non-destructive-digging (NDD) trucks to investigate whether we can in fact retain these trees. We’ve this week done the investigation on the tree closest to Park Street, and unfortunately there are structural roots very close to the surface and directly in the path of the excavation works. We’ve had arborists out to provide advice and have also called in City of Port Phillip arborists to review the findings – it appears that the tree will need to be removed. It will be replanted with a replacement tree in the same location as part of the works. The other tree along the footpath will have NDD excavation carried out next week, I’ll advise everyone of the outcome once we know more.

I hope everyone has a restful and enjoyable Easter break.