In the high-speed railways from Palencia to León, Arenas & Asociados has projected three pergolas for overpass the Way of St. James Motorway (A-231) in different places.
This structural typology is the most adequate for solving the crossing of different elements which have an important fleet angle in plan, because it allows to establish an appropriate visual relation from the lower road thanks to the walls parallels to the edge of the road, which also leads to the possibility of reducing the depth of the upper structure.
The three structures are very similar between them, only varying the length and spans in function of the fleet angle.
The most skewed has 107 m length between abutments, measuring the length in a parallel direction to the edge of the railway.
The structures are completed with abutments conformed by an upper fixed slab which are a perfect transition from the embankment to the pergola and acts as a fixed point for the bridge.
The actual span of the structures varies from 17.5 to 21.5 m.
The pergola's lintel is materialized with a hollowed concrete slab built on site using a formwork.
The slab is fixed in the abutments walls and only vertical supported over the road.
The pergola is divided into independents structures, which is very practical for the construction procedure because the A-231 could be opened for maintaining the service working in only one element at the same time.
