Gold Coast quality

The City of Gold Coast in eastern Australia is replacing its important Isle of Capri Bridge, and opting for the use of high-quality mageba bridge bearings and expansion joints in the new bridge’s construction.

Gold Coast, Australia’s sixth biggest city in terms of population, is also one of the country’s most visited tourist destinations, partly due to its 70 km of coastline which includes numerous popular beaches such as Surfer’s Paradise. It is located just south of Brisbane, capital of Queensland and home to the iconic Gateway Bridge which has featured TENSA®MODULAR expansion joints on both of its parallel structures since 2010. Happy to invest properly in the infrastructure that a major tourism centre like this needs, the city council decided to upgrade the 60-year-old Isle of Capri Bridge, an important structure that provides access from the city centre to the coast. A new four-lane bridge is currently being constructed to replace the existing structure. The new bridge is approximately 140 m long and designed to allow large vessels to pass underneath.

mageba is proud to have supplied all of the expansion joints and bearings required in the bridge’s construction – 140 LASTO®BLOCK laminated elastomeric bearings to support the superstructure, 96 LASTO®PAD elastomeric bearings to provide lateral restraint, and two TENSA®FINGER type RSFD cantilever finger expansion joints to accommodate movements of 160 mm. The joints are designed in compliance with the Australian bridge design standard AS5100.4 and the Queensland standard MRTS82A relating to finger-type expansion joints. For ease of use and maintenance, they are equipped with cover plates in the shared walkway/cycleway areas at each end, and with hose connections for washing out the drainage channels.

Good, modern infrastructure is one of the most visible signs of a city’s high quality of life, and can significantly boost tourism by enhancing the good impression visitors get of the city while spending time there. So we are glad to have made a small contribution towards giving the City of Gold Coast some of the high-quality infrastructure its visitors appreciate and expect. 

Bridge designer: BONACCI Infrastructure
Contractor: Georgiou
Owner: City of Gold Coast

For each end of the bridge, mageba supplied a TENSA®FINGER type RSFD cantilever finger expansion joint, 9.6 m long and designed to accommodate movements of 160 mm

Despite travel restrictions imposed by Covid-19 on the staff of our Sydney office, detailed installation instructions and close communication with the team on site helped ensure proper installation

The four-metre shared walk- and cycleways at each end of each joint are equipped with suitably profiled sliding plates with anti-skid surfacing on top

Installed cantilever finger expansion joint

Fully installed TENSA®FINGER type RSFD cantilever finger expansion joint on one end of the bridge including the shared walk- and cycleway

Installed LASTO®BLOCK laminated elastomeric bearings to support the superstructure

The elastomeric bearings supplied for the Isle of Capri Bridge are of the same LASTO®BLOCK type supplied a few years earlier for the nearby Toowoomba Second Range Crossing – 1308 in total