Welcome to the end of a very soggy week in Melbourne. Despite the weather, I’m pleased to report that the crews working on St Kilda Road have made some excellent progress and we’re scheduled to be finished tomorrow and the road reopened as planned. I’ve included a progress photo below from Domain Road yesterday prior to the asphalt going in.
Is this the end for our night works on St Kilda Road?, I hear you ask.
Not quite, but we are now through the last major interventions. We’ve still got a few things to do, including one northbound lane of St Kilda Road that needs its final layer of asphalt (Adjacent to the ventilation and chillers, between to the Toorak Road tram stop pedestrian crossing and Bowen Lane) This is going to happen in early May once we’ve got the landscaping done through the centre median (I iimagine it would be 2-3 nights of work at a maximum) I’ll let you know when we have the finer details.
Southbound, we’ll also eventually need to asphalt the left turn from St Kilda Road into Domain Road prior to it reopening – no set time frame on that just yet.
Back to the one-week look ahead, and below is a snapshot of what is coming up everywhere on site.
Overnight Works:
Line Marking
Tonight is the final night of works, which will primarily be linemarking.
I’ve included line marking next week, just in case we don’t get the final lines down tonight. We’ve earmarked Monday night for this – but given where we currently are, we’re confident we’ll get it done today and tonight
We’ll prioritise the St Kilda Road line marking tonight, so anything that misses out will be small stuff and won’t require any St Kilda Road closures.
Albert Road Reserve forecourt and Station Entrance (Works until 1am)
With the concrete down, the paving team have wasted no time at all getting into the new surface and laying an array of bluestone through the concreted area. Those who have walked past the South African Soldiers’ memorial would have noticed that the first of the heritage blocks were lifted into place this morning (Friday) this careful process will continue over the coming weeks.
There is some minor steel fixing that will happen next to the lift shaft next week. It’s a mini-milestone – but one worth noting. This is the very final piece of the primary station structure to be constructed. For those that love seeing concrete poured – rest assured we’ll still have more to come for ancillary retaining walls and the like – but this is literally the last piece of the station puzzle.
Shrine Entrance and Domain Road (Works until 1am)
Speaking on ancillary structures – the retaining wall around the Shrine forecourt has made some progress in between showers this week. With some drier weather forecast we should see this section move forward.
The footpath up Domain Road running alongside Melbourne Grammar has also suffered from the wet conditions, as well as the discovery of a communications cable that will need to be re-laid under the footpath. At this stage with school returning on Tuesday, we’ll ensure the access to the school is maintained, while the new communications conduit is laid down towards St Kilda Road.
I’ll have a revised opening date next week once we’ve got some progress behind us in this area – the aim is to lay some asphalt tonight along the length of this footpath with a view to reopen it as soon as we can.
Lastly, as I mentioned last week, we will open the fourth and final pedestrian crossing to the new Anzac Station tram stop tomorrow – the temporary footpath in the bike lane will also reopen, connecting the corner of Domain Road to the pedestrian crossing at Park Street.
Centre Island – St Kilda Road
Adjacent to tram stop:
The median adjacent to the tram stop has had the grass planted overnight – adding to some additional greenery to match in with the resplendent green legs of the station canopy. These areas will be available to plant trees, with tree planting being handled by the relevant local councils. I’ll provide an update next week on the expected timing of trees planting through the area.
Southern Area:
We’re expecting the mechanical electrical and plumbing work around the chiller plants to wrap up tomorrow, which will allow us to get in and complete the landscaping through these areas. There’s a final bit of drainage to go in, before we switch to irrigation and landscaping – including tree plot preparation and turf laying.
Rectification Works
As we finish each area of the job and do a final inspection, there are inevitably some areas that will require touch ups, or fixes.
One such area is the kerbing in front of 400 St Kilda Road, which was knocked out of alignment shortly after installation. Next week we’ll be coming back to fix this up. To do so, we’ll run an NDD truck alongside the kerb to remove a thin strip of the garden bed, remove and reset the kerb stone, and then reinstate the strip of garden bed. We’re expecting this to kick off on Tuesday and will be complete by the end of the week.
Rather than closing St Kilda Road and doing these works at night – we’ll instead reduce St Kilda Road to one lane and a bike lane and complete the works during daytime hours. This will mean that the works wont kick off until after peak hour traffic has passed through at approximately 9:30am.
Street Lighting
CitiPower have confirmed that the street lighting north of the station box will go on tonight – still waiting on a date for the lights south of the station box – but it should follow closely behind
Have a wonderful weekend
Thanks, Rob
The Botanica 