As a freight train roared along the tracks overhead, Orange County officials celebrated the completion of the State College Undercrossing Tuesday, which allows traffic to flow separate from the railroad tracks.
“It keeps people moving through our streets … I know our residents will really appreciate that. It also is going to give them back time from the past where they were waiting,” said California Assemblywoman Sharon Quirk-Silva.
The ceremony not only celebrated the State College Undercrossing, but also the completion of the entire OC Bridges Program, which is a series of underpasses and overpasses along the Burlington Northern Santa Fe (BNSF) Railway. The goal of the project is to improve safety and traffic flow along the BNSF Railway by allowing civilian traffic to pass underneath the railroad tracks to avoid delays.
“We have 70 trains per day that come through this corridor as we stand here today, and by 2030 that would go up to 130 trains a day, meaning a car would be stopped every 10 minutes by a train,” said Michael Hennessey, chair of the Orange County Transit Authority Board of Directors. “If you consider the need for moving first responders around the community, it’s really important.”
The State College Undercrossing is the final project of seven similar projects constructed in the last five years to separate railroad tracks from street traffic.
The program involved construction in Anaheim, Fullerton and Placentia. The following streets have a partial or fully completed railroad separation at their intersection with the BNSF railway:
- Placentia Avenue
- Kraemer Boulevard
- Tustin Avenue/Rose Drive
- Orangethorpe Avenue
- Lakeview Avenue
- Raymond Avenue
- State College Boulevard
The State College Undercrossing project, which began in 2014, is a combined effort with the city of Fullerton and the OCTA.
“State College, in particular, is a very busy street — lots of traffic, lots of volume of cars, and obviously a very busy rail line,” said Darrell Johnson, CEO of OCTA. “So the goal here was to ensure that we could separate the trains from the cars while at the same time keeping all of the traffic flowing the way it used to flow beforehand.”
While the State College Underpass cost $96.9 million, the OC Bridges Program cost a total of $663.9 million.
Most of the money paying for the project comes from federal and state funding. However, $157.7 million is coming from Measure M2, the half-cent sales tax appropriated for transportation improvements passed by Orange County voters in 2006.
The State College Undercrossing will be open for public use Nov. 1.
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