Los Angeles Union Station is the hub for the Southlands’s commuter and passenger rail network for Metrolink, Amtrak, and Metro Redline, and is located in downtown Los Angeles.

This Project consisted of adding a fifth lead track, turnouts, crossovers, and double-slip switches within active tracks. It also included reconfiguring the existing tracks and turnouts to add capacity northward out of the station toward the Ventura County and Antelope Valley lines. There is heavy passenger rail traffic on all active tracks through the site that required careful scheduling and coordinating our work with Metrolink & Amtrak operations to minimize impacts to train movement into the passenger stations. The Project was successfully completed on schedule and under budget in November 2006.

The project construction included:

• Earthwork - moved  1600 CY of material during project
• Track Removal - 850  TF
• Track Realignment -  1500 TF
• New Track  Construction - 780 TF
• Turnout Removal - 6  EA
• Turnout Relocation  - 3 EA
• New Turnout  Construction #8 - 5 ea
• New Turnout  Constructrion #14 - 2 ea
• Double Slip Switch  #8 - 1 ea
• Paving - 20,000  SF

The benefits of this new lead track is that it will create operational efficiencies and flexibility, improve capacity of LA Union Station through the addition of routes for the LOSSAN corridor, eliminate many crossover and turnout movements, and provide separation of traffic on lead tracks between the major routes. In addition, it will eliminate conflicts between the major traffic flows at peak periods at LA Union Station. This capital improvement Project will increase capacity and also reduce overall impact of delays.