L.A. County’s newest light rail segment is expected to open later this summer in the San Gabriel Valley.
The $1.5 billion, 9.1-mile Foothill Gold Line project will extend the Metro A Line from its current terminus in Glendora eastward to Pomona. Eventually, the goal is to take the line into Montclair in San Bernardino County, but the sole bid for that final 3-mile extension came in way too high for the Foothill Gold Line Construction Authority’s budget.
Nonetheless, when this segment to Pomona opens, it will bring the A Line – with its other terminus in Long Beach – to nearly 58 miles, breaking the A Line’s own record for the longest continuous light rail line in the world.
The construction contractor for the Foothill Gold Line Extension to Pomona was a joint venture of Omaha, Nebraska-based Kiewit Corp. and Centreville, Virginia-based Parsons Corp.
The construction budget was nearly $907 million, with another $600 million or so in pre-construction and other costs bringing the project total to $1.5 billion. Local transportation sales tax dollars provided the bulk of the funding, along with nearly $300 million from state transit funds.
Construction remained on track during and after pandemic
Major construction for the project started in July 2020, in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic and continued with minimal delays through the rest of the pandemic and subsequent supply chain disruptions.
In January, a major milestone was reached when the Foothill Gold Line Construction Authority handed over the substantially completed project to the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority, or Metro. Up to that point, the Kiewit-Parsons team had logged more than 2.6 million hours of work on the project.
Last month, Metro crews began train testing and other final preparations ahead of the opening. Metro has yet to schedule the opening date.
“The Kiewit-Parsons team did an outstanding job designing and constructing the light rail project, despite significant and unprecedented challenges,” Habib Balian, chief executive of the Foothill Gold Line Construction Authority, said in the announcement of the project handover in January.
“It is unusual for a large infrastructure project to come in on time and on budget, but KPJV was partners with the construction authority from the start and found ways to innovate and keep the project moving through the Covid-19 pandemic, historic heatwaves and historic rains,” Balian added.
New stations, bridges, at-grade improvements
The extension adds four new stations – two at the aforementioned endpoints of Glendora and Pomona and two in between in San Dimas and La Verne. Unlike the extensive underground caverns for Metro’s subway projects, these stations are partially covered, above-ground platforms.
Kiewit-Parsons crews also built 19 bridges along the 9.1-mile route; most of these involved grade separations to minimize delays and collision risks with commercial and passenger vehicles and buses. And they installed safety enhancements at 21 at-grade street crossings.
Metro has yet to release ridership projections showing how many passengers it expects the extension to add to A Line ridership, which Metro said averaged about 70,000 weekday boardings last November.
This is the third segment to the Foothill Gold Line carried out by the Foothill Gold Line Construction Authority. The first segment, from Union Station to Pasadena, opened in 2003, while the second segment east to Azusa opened in 2015.
The final segment to Montclair was originally set to begin construction later this year and wrap up prior to the 2028 Summer Olympic and Paralympic Games. But that project is now on hold after Kiewit came in with a bid of nearly $1 billion, about 54% over the anticipated budget. The Foothill Gold Line Construction Authority is now seeking to restructure the bidding process to draw in more bidders. But ultimately, the agency may need to seek more funds to close the gap.
