The Foothill Gold Line Construction Authority board of directors recently approved the advanced conceptual engineering (ACE) draft documents for the 12.3-mile, six-station Foothill Gold Line light rail project from Glendora to Montclair. Engineering for the project began in Fall 2014, and took about 35,000 man hours and $15 million to complete.
The approval marks a major milestone in the agency’s effort to ready the $1.2 billion light rail segment for construction as early as next year, and is part of the final phase of work before the project is ready for a design-build procurement. The draft documents will now be distributed to the corridor cities, as well as key agencies, including Los Angeles County Metro, Metrolink, and the San Bernardino Associated Governments, for a 60-day review and comment period, and those comments will be integrated into a verification set for a final review next Spring.
“Last night’s approval is the culmination of more than two years of work, which brought the design level for the project to about 30 percent, with some elements designed to 50 percent,” explained Habib F. Balian, CEO of the Foothill Gold Line Construction Authority. “That is the level we believe is appropriate to allow future design-build teams a good understanding of the project, so they can limit the contingency added to the bid price for unknowns; and also allows the cities and our partner agencies the detail they need to prepare for the project.”
The ACE documents contain more than 700 pages of engineering drawings detailing all elements of the light rail project. Fourteen categories of project components are covered in the document, including the design for the six future stations and parking facilities, two dozen grade separated bridge structures, two dozen at-grade crossings, walls and fences, street improvements, the safety and communications systems and more. With the entire 12.3-mile corridor shared with freight, the drawings also detail the location for the freight track relocation to make room for the two new light rail tracks.
“We have taken lessons learned from the first two segments of the line and integrated them into the design for the Glendora to Montclair segment,” added Balian. “All stations will be able to be accessed from all sides, all will have center platforms for ease of use, we will be building four times the number of parking spaces than the last segment, and we will be installing fare gates at each station – to mention just a few of the improvements.”
Residual Measure R funding from the Pasadena to Azusa segment was used for the engineering work for the Glendora to Montclair extension. Construction of the new extension is estimated to cost $1.2 billion, with the majority of the funding anticipated to come from Measure M, a half-cent sales tax measure being placed on the November 2016 ballot by Los Angeles County Metro. If approved by voters in November, the Foothill Gold Line will be one of the first projects in the measure to break ground.
