SGV Celebrates New Fullerton Road Rail Grade Separation

The San Gabriel Council of Governments held a ribbon cutting and dedication ceremony for the Fullerton Road Grade Separation in City of Industry on Wednesday. The long closed-for-construction Fullerton Road will reopen in a few days.

Just as SGVCOG president and Claremont vice mayor Ed Reece began the program, a freight train went by overhead, delighting the audience as Reece gestured upward.

After a minute or two of train noise mixed with laughter, Reece jumped back into his speech, rattling off statistics and facts about the decade-long project.

The Fullerton Road Grade Separation features a six-lane roadway underpass, and three bridges above: a four-track railway, a vehicular bridge for Railroad Street, and a pedestrian bridge. About 90 trains pass through per day, while 25,000 cars are expected to drive under them.

The pedestrian bridge was built from 2.5 million pounds of steel. The rail and vehicular bridges were poured with 19,000 cubic yards of concrete. The underpass required 62,000 cubic yards of dirt to be excavated. This is the 17th of 19 grade separations for the Alameda Corridor East, and it cost nearly $275 million. 

“This roadway underpass and the impressive structure towering above us stands as a powerful testament to our collective resolve to elevate safety and mobility within the City of Industry, Rowland Heights community, and the larger San Gabriel Valley,” Reece said. 

For the project’s entire duration, the nerves of locals have been tested. Fullerton previously functioned not just as an arterial road to Orange County, but also a relief valve for the Puente Hills. For ten years, drivers detoured to Nogales Street or Azusa Avenue, and getting past Fullerton on Gale Avenue during rush hour meant waiting through numerous traffic light rotations. Drivers passing by honked their horns in relief that it would all soon be over.

City of Industry Mayor Cory Moss recounted the trials and tribulations of the work.

“The original contractor abandoned the project, citing design issues. There were significant delays going through the process of awarding the project to a new contractor. We had utility relocation complications and coordinating challenges with various partners that added even more hurdles,” Moss said, adding that “it seemed like every time we thought there cannot possibly be something else that would go wrong that would further delay this project, I felt like this project said, ‘Hey, dude, hold my beer.’”

Now that it’s finished, the road will be open again in a matter of days. Presumably, crews are installing a final handrail on the stairway to the pedestrian bridge.

The entire project was dedicated to retired Congressmember Grace Napolitano. After thanking the project’s construction workers, La Verne Mayor Tim Hepburn detailed her many achievements.

Napolitano began her political career on Norwalk City Council in the 1980s, moving on to State Assembly and U.S. Congress in the 1990s, serving thirteen terms there until 2025. Mayor Hepburn touted her work on the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, where she advocated for the Metro A Line extension, secured federal funding for improved bus service in the region, and brought the bottleneck at the SR 57-60 confluence to the attention of U.S. Secretary of Transportation Anthony Fox.

“She’s the only member of Congress that I can recall who, right in the middle of one of our meetings, picked up the phone and called the CEO of Union Pacific Railroad to ask that the company come to the table and immediately address our concerns,” Hepburn said about the Grade Separation project. “She didn’t just take notes. She didn’t just promise to follow up. She picked up the phone and got to work. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is what I call fierce advocacy.” 

Hepburn finished, “Grace, this project stands as a permanent reminder of what your leadership helped make possible, and of the lasting difference one dedicated public servant can make in the lives of so many. Thank you.” 

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