New glass bicycle parking facility RAI Station triples capacity

Construction company J.P. van Eesteren, commissioned by the City of Amsterdam, has given the metro hall and bicycle parking facility at RAI Station a complete makeover. In the process, the bicycle parking facility was provided with a beautiful glass facade and roof. The capacity has been expanded from 500 to some 1,850 spaces. 

The subway hall was also enlarged and renewed in the style of the NS station renovated five years earlier. The busy station next to the RAI and Amsterdam Zuidas remained open every day during the work. Indeed, a key requirement of GVB and ProRail was that their passengers should not be inconvenienced. "And that succeeded," says project leader Sander Spoor of J.P. van Eesteren. "The subway hall has not been closed for a single day while it is busy with pedestrians here from six in the morning until ten in the evening. That meant a lot of night work, but also that you had to move the fences metre by metre during the day to keep the construction site as small as possible."

Beforehand in 3D

The work consisted of demolition, earthwork, piling and the installation of precast floors, a steel structure and glazing. Very helpful here was that the entire project was modeled in 3D in a Building Information Model (BIM) prior to the renovation. Spoor: "That certainly helped us. There is a lot of glass in this project. That has to fit. You can still customize wood on site, glass cannot."