Nelson Street Pink Bridge – Late 2015
In Late 2015 Resin Surfaces were fortunate to win the contract to apply the pink surfacing to the Nelson street cycle lane bridge. The bridge has become quite a landmark even a tourist attraction in Auckland.
I believe the bridge originally built as a motorway ramp in the early 70s, through the heart of Auckland’s spaghetti junction, along with all the other bridges and ramps there. It was presumably built as a future proofing exercise operating on the premise “well it’s going to be required in the future and will be way too disruptive and difficult to build when the main junction is open, so let’s build it now”. However, things changed, the ramp was surplus to requirements, so Auckland Council and NZTA saw an opportunity to turn it into a walking and cycling asset. Possibly a lesson here about future proofing pitfalls.
The bare concrete surface was overlaid with asphalt by Hawkins, the head contractor. We then overlaid with Magenta surfacing, consisting of approx. 1mm of like coloured Polyurethane resin, flooded with magenta coated clear glass chippings.
In February 2017, we overlaid the surface with a UV resistant topcoat, consisting of a magenta coloured, 2 pot Aliphatic epoxy coating. In June 2017 we removed the failing Calcined bauxite coating, (that had been laid by others), on the steel bridge connecting the “pink bridge” to Canada Street.
We worked with our suppliers on coating the steel bridge with a system that would ensure longevity, it involved removing the old bauxite surfacing, doing multiple solvent wipes of the zinc coated steel surface to ensure adhesion, then applying a zinc rich mastic epoxy primer to the surface before applying the pink top coats. QA work beforehand included doing on site adhesion testing of the total system, and texture depth checks on the zinced steel deck.