VRIOGS 002.1 Railway Station Design Standard and Guidelines

VRIOGS 002.1 Revision A 378.6 EMERGENCY EGRESSRailway stations shall be quickly and safely evacuated during emergencies. To complywith government legislation, the design of new train stations shall meet the performancerequirements of the BCA. Each train station shall be designed to meet the performancerequirements by either satisfying the prescriptive Deemed to Satisfy (DTS) requirementsor through performance based fire engineering.The Deemed to Satisfy provisions of the BCA state that a class 9b building (whichincorporates train stations) shall not have to travel more then 60m to an emergency exit.However this would be difficult to achieve on a linear structure such as a rail platform andin general the length of escape routes for train stations do not comply with the deemed tosatisfy provisions of the BCA. Furthermore moving from one end of the platform toanother may put a person at sufficient distance from the emergency to be considered safe.Therefore, using public access paths to leave the station or relocating to other parts of theplatform, the performance outcome allowed by the building code is met.The objective of the fire safety strategy is to ensure that people can move away from apotential fire or danger. There are numerous methods to achieve this, some relying onrules governing escape routes and others emphasising evacuation time. NFPA 130 is theprimary standard for fire and lift safety, developed to address urban rail system, it is astandard specifically written to ensure safe egress from all types of railway stations. Theprincipal of the standard is to establish a reasonable occupant load, including both thepassengers waiting on the station and those on a train, then design enough means ofegress for that population to leave the station platform within 4 minutes in the event of anemergency. Further the standard requires that the ‘occupants’ should be able to escape toa ‘point of safety’ within 6 minutes.The key design aspect for the means of escape is to utilise the main entry and exit routesfor escape, not the traditional method of using separated fire isolated stairs, as would beused in a retail or commercial building. The main entry and exit points of the station areaimed at moving high volumes of people quickly. In a fire emergency, this is exactly whatis required; people to move off platforms as quickly as possible.As an extension to providing emergency egress through the use of a platform as a place ofsafety and utilising the main entry and exit points for escape, in the event that the mainentry and exit route to or from a station is impassable during an emergency an alternativeemergency egress route to a place of safety shall where possible be provided. Theprovision of an alternative emergency exit shall be assessed on a station by station basis.A risk assessment shall be undertaken and the outcome used to determine when anemergency exit is to be provided.Where emergency egress from the platform is able to be provided it shall consist of a gate,fencing and signage that meet the design and engineering requirements described inSection 9.12. Exit paths shall be easily located by people with a disability duringemergencies. Clear directional signage to enable this shall be provided.NOTE: This document is controlled only when viewed on the DOT Engineering Standards website. Any othercopy of this document is uncontrolled, and the content may be inaccurate.