Local San Gabriel Valley officials will hold a special gathering on Nov. 1 to launch the construction of a railroad trench that will ultimately make railroad crossings safer in the area.
The special event will take place 10:30 a.m., Thursday, Nov. 1, 2012, at Plaza Park (adjacent to San Gabriel Mission), 428 S. Mission Drive, City of San Gabriel, CA 91776.
Federal, state and local officials will gather to kick off construction of a concrete-walled railroad trench reaching 30 feet deep, 65 feet wide and 1.4 miles long through the City of San Gabriel with street bridges spanning the trench to be constructed at Ramona Street, Mission Road, Del Mar Avenue and San Gabriel Boulevard.
The $336.5 million project will create 8,900 jobs over five years of construction. The streets are used by nearly 90,000 motorists each day and the project will eliminate crossing congestion caused by the passage of an average of 18 trains per day, projected to increase to 61 trains per day by 2025 if a second track is installed as planned by Union Pacific Railroad.
The project will eliminate crossing collisions, with two fatal and two injury collisions recorded over the last 10 years in San Gabriel. Train horns and crossing alarms will be silenced with the removal of the at-grade crossings and the trench walls will shield nearby homes, churches, schools and businesses from train noise.
The project is an investment in a program of grade separations along the Alameda Corridor-East Trade Corridor, which accommodates about 60% of the containers moved from the nation’s busiest container ports in the San Pedro Bay to the rest of the country via the region’s rail network.
Officials who will attend the event include Reps. Judy Chu and Ed Royce, State Senators Carol Liu and Ed Hernandez, Assembly-members Bonnie Lowenthal, Mike Eng, Anthony Portantino, Norma Torres and Roger Hernandez, California Transportation Commissioners Dario Frommer, Fran Inman and Yvonne Burke, LA County Supervisor and MTA Chairman Michael Antonovich, FHWA Associate Division Administrator Rick Backlund, Caltrans Acting District Director Terry Abbott, MTA Director John Fasana and other elected officials and community leaders.
