Relieving the Pressure.

Marvel of Engineering Eases Traffic Logjam At Redondo Junction

A manual switching station dating from the first half of the last century still controls the intersection of tracks at the unsightly patch of industrial wasteland known as Redondo Junction.

Sandwiched between Amtrak rail yards, the Los Angeles River and a mixture of cement factories and wastepaper-packing plants, the junction is the point where cargo trains traveling north from the seaports cross the Amtrak and Metrolink commuter trains heading south from Union Station.

The crisscross regularly creates a mess of cargo, truck and passenger traffic choking the area, not to mention asphyxiating levels of exhaust from all the idled vehicles.

Mile-long cargo trains crawl past at 5 miles per hour, backing up street traffic along Santa Fe Avenue and Washington Boulevard for 10 to 15 minutes at a time. That is, if the trains are moving at all. Passenger trains coming from Union Station have precedence over cargo trains and can bring local street traffic, including emergency vehicles like ambulances and fire trucks; to an indefinite standstill.

But the nightmare that has long existed and continually worsened at Redondo Junction is expected to fade away toward the end of this year, thanks to a project that is being hailed as something of an engineering wonder.

It is nothing less than a complete transformation of Redondo Junction. The project, a key portion of the $2.4 billion Alameda Corridor rail project, involves putting cargo train tracks above or below city streets and passenger train tracks, so all the various vehicles that have been in each other's way for so long are suddenly traversing their own unimpeded course. It's an intricate array of concrete and steel, tons and tons of it, that will soon orchestrate a seemless choreography of vehicular bodies in motion.

"Technically, this was a tremendous challenge to design," said John Rinard, vice president of DMJM and former chief engineer of the Alameda Corridor engineering team. "The geometrics of the different systems are so intertwined that whatever you move at one point creates a problem one mile farther down."

Aside from the technical challenge, the engineering team had to contend with the substandard pre-existing infrastructure in the area and the interests of all the parties affected by the project, from the railroad companies to the municipalities and surrounding businesses.

"Usually, after we had met with all the parties, we needed to go right back to the drawing board," said Rinard. "But the biggest benefactors will ultimately be the local communities, like the city of Vernon, which now can get completely closed off by the freight trains, because they will experience the biggest congestion relief."

Awesome structure

The new bridge for passenger trains at Redondo Junction, spanning the length of eight football fields and bending southeast from the Amtrak rail yard west of the L.A. River to Soto Street on the east side, is by far the biggest piece of the project.

The combined north-end project will cost $140 million, according to Gray Crary, area manager for north-end projects with the Alameda Corridor engineering team, and once completed it will allow for trains twice the length of those used now to barrel through at 40 mph. In addition, it will shave seven minutes off the commute for Amtrak and Metrolink passengers going to and coming from Union Station.

Already completed is a new bridge for freight trains over the L.A. River, aptly named the Los Angeles River Bridge, which will expand to three tracks from the current single active track. The new bridge replaced a century-old, single-track span.

The remade Redondo Junction, a complex of new bridges and tunnels, is designed to let the Union Pacific and Burlington Northern Santa Fe trains travel unimpeded across busy streets and passenger rail tracks before splitting off to their respective mainlines east of downtown.

The bridges are located at a point where the 10-mile trench portion of the corridor, which runs from the southern end of Compton to the northern end of Vernon, comes perilously close to the L.A. River. Since it's not feasible to dig a trench through the river, Crary said, "the idea is to continue the grade separation, which is key to the entire project, after the trains leave the trench. We had to bring the trains over the river, so we needed to overhaul the entire infrastructure in this area."

Over and under

The complex engineering project calls for a new viaduct at Santa Fe Avenue that will take automobile traffic over the freight lines, an underpass at Washington Boulevard for vehicular traffic to pass under the freight lines, and the bridge that will carry passenger trains over the freight tracks.

Once on the east side of the river, the Union Pacific trains will split off from Burlington Northern Santa Fe trains, to each take their own respective tracks eastward across the San Gabriel Valley.

The last piece in the puzzle will be a grade separation, just each of the river at Soto Street in Boyle Heights. Construction on that bridge is scheduled to be completed during the first quarter of 2002.

After that, the dance will begin in earnest, and the nightmare that has been Redondo Junction will fade into memory.