Foothill Gold Line design advances

The Foothill Gold Line Construction Authority has announced that the 9.1-mile, four-station Foothill Gold Line light-rail segment from Glendora to Pomona, California, has reached a major milestone.

The design for the $1.5 billion light-rail line now has reached substantial completion, authority officials said in a press release. The design-build project was awarded to a Kiewit-Parsons joint venture in October 2019 and the first year of the contract was spent focused on completing enough design to start major construction. Major construction then began in July 2020 and the project now is 36% complete.  

The project design is a significant element of the complicated design-build project, authority officials said. Disciplines — such as track, stations and systems — are completed in packages covering the entire 9.1-mile alignment, civil design elements such as roadways, lighting, drainage and walls are completed in segments, and each of the 19 bridge structures are designed individually.

All design elements must go through multiple levels of approval and are often reviewed by multiple agencies at each stage. Now all elements of the project are approved for construction.

The base project from Glendora to Pomona is currently six months ahead of the contractual completion deadline of January 2025.

The design-build contract includes an option to have the Kiewit-Parsons team complete the entire project from Glendora to Montclair if additional funding is secured by early October. If that is achieved, the entire 12.3-mile, six-station project will be completed in early 2026, authority officials said.