Railing Height Requirements with Benches 1

[123gofast]

I have been asked by some others in my office to chase down an answer. Unfortunately, I don't have the experience/availability to complete this task by the time they want it, so I thought I'd ask here.

The project is in British Columbia and involves a new overpass over rail and natural areas. There will be bike/ped lanes on one side of the overpass, and thus railing/guard heights here will need to accommodate the users.

The design calls for permanent benches to be installed at some bumpouts/lookouts that are over the natural areas (not the rail). There are two questions:
1. Is there a required min/max offset distance for a bench from a railing?
2. Is there a requirement to increase the railing code-height by the height of the bench?

Intuition tells me that there is no requirement for #1.
For #2, if the rail height needs to be 54" for bikes, but you have a bench that is 16" tall, would you need a rail of 70"? Or, since the bench would be a pedestrian feature (not a bike feature), would the required height be 42"+16" = 58"?

Which Canadian/provincial codes would apply here? CHBDC. BCBC? I'm a transplant to Canada from the US, so most of my experience is in AASHTO.

Thanks!

 

[JStephen]

I notice some of the pedestrian bridges around here are fully enclosed with chainlink, I assume to keep people from lobbing stuff (or maybe themselves) off the bridges.

 

[BridgeSmith]

Not sure what the code would require, but it would make sense that if the bench is close enough to the rail that someone could step up on the bench and fall over the rail from there, it would need to be at least the 58" tall. Presumably, you would not need to consider the case of someone riding their bike on the bench, so the 70" seems like overkill. If there isn't code/spec guidance otherwise, I'd suggest using 58" as the minimum. It's apparently only 4" more than you're going to have to do for bicycles, anyway.

 

[TLHS]

Building code likely isn't an applicable standard, but it always good to have in the back of your mind.

The bridge design codes have requirements for pedestrian and cycling guards, and there are BC specific ammendments.

Canadian Highway Bridge Design Code
BC Supplement to the Canadian Highway Bridge Design Code

The following two likely don't actually govern, but cover similar situations where there are steep drops next to a roadway:

TAC Geometric Design Guide
BC MoT Supplement to the TAC Geometric Design Guide

I would also generally review the BC MoT standard highway specifications and standard drawings. I'm pretty sure they don't touch on this, but they're free and good to have on hand in general.

 

[MintJulep]

Bicycles and benches.