A Line extension to Montclair appears dead, at least for now

A long-planned extension of the A Line to Montclair appears to be over before it got started.

On Sept, 3, the San Bernardino County Transportation Authority voted 15-11 to reject a proposed agreement with the Foothill Gold Line Construction Authority that would have extended the light-rail line (formerly the Gold Line) to Montclair after it reaches Pomona later this month, and eventually Claremont.

Several board members said they were concerned about the project’s $80.3 million price tag, and that the construction authority, not the transportation authority, should have final say regarding the design and operation of the extension.

“I stand steadfast in my commitment to making sure that Montclair gets what it deserves,” board member Alan Warner said during the meeting. “I think the benefit of the Gold Line coming into Montclair would be incredible.”

But Wapner said he could not vote to pay for the extension, and then give absolute control of the project to the construction authority, as the proposed memorandum of understanding would have done.

He compared that arrangement to a hypothetical one in which Ontario and Rancho Cucamonga agreed to a reworking of Haven Avenue, a major thoroughfare that runs through both cities, with one condition: that Ontario would pay for the work, but Rancho Cucamonga would decide what improvements would be made.

“Even if we come to an agreement, I don’t think I can support it,” Warner told his fellow board members before voting with the majority. “People support the Gold Line, but I don’t think they would support it if they knew we were handing a check to the construction authority to build whatever they want to build, and to operate it however they want to operate it, and then we pay for all of it.”

After the vote, the transportation authority board directed staff to study ways to connect the A Line to Montclair, using $37 million in local funding the transportation authority had set aside for the Montclair extension.

That leaves the door open slightly for an extension agreement someday, but one longtime observer of the Inland Empire and its transportation infrastructure believes the proposal is dead and buried.

“It’s gone, and I don’t think the Pomona-to-Claremont extension will happen either,” said Manfred Keil, associate professor of economics at Claremont McKenna College.

“The issue is the cost of the extension. It’s not that far, but the cost is enormous. The commission couldn’t overcome the cost, so it dropped the whole thing.”

Keil has long lamented the number of people who live in the Inland Empire but work in one of the surrounding counties: 133,000 in San Bernardino County, according to an economic study commissioned by the construction authority.

But Keil doesn’t believe extending the A Line into Montclair will do much to help solve that problem.

“It would help if there we were a lot of houses built along the rail line, like what happened in Pasadena, but that won’t happen in Montclair,” Keil said. “I think the impact would be minimal. There would be some (houses built) but not many.”

Of the 3.3 miles of track from Pomona to Montclair, only 65 percent was slated to end up in Montclair, said Albert Ho, construction authority spokesman.

An estimated 8,850 passengers were expected to use the Claremont and Montclair stations on a typical day, enough to eliminate 15,000 car trips daily, and approximately 26.7 million vehicle miles a year, according to Ho.

The extension of the A Line to Claremont, which is expected to take six years to complete, is still in play.

“We’re still in the procurement process, and we expect to have a designer in November,” Ho said. “The connection to Claremont is still happening.”

On Sept, 19, the A Line is scheduled to begin taking passengers to and from the Pomona North Station on Garey Avenue.

That will add nine miles of track and four new stations – Glendora, San Dimas, La Verne/Fairplex, and Pomona North – to the A Line, and give the eastern end of the San Gabriel Valley another way to travel by rail.

The Pomona station, which has sat vacant for years, will provide a connection to the Metrolink station in San Bernardino. The Metrolink runs daily from Union Station in downtown Los Angeles to San Bernardino and Riverside.

That system began in 1990, when the Blue Line (now part of the A Line) began operating between Los Angeles and Long Beach.

The Montclair extension would have been the first of the Los Angeles light-rail lines to reach the Inland Empire.

The county transportation authority began working on bringing the then-Gold Line to Montclair in 2004, when voters passed Measure I, a half-cent sales tax that raised money for transportation projects.

In 2012, the construction authority was authorized by the state legislature to build the Montclair extension. Construction was to have started next year and be completed in 2031.

During that time, the project would have created 580 construction jobs and nearly $46 million in labor income, the construction authority’s economic study found.

Meanwhile, one of the persons most responsible for getting A Line to Montclair said that effort is not dead.

“This is not the end of the line for the Gold Line to reach Montclair, but the (transportation authority) vote was a significant setback,” said Habib F. Balian, chief executive officer of the construction authority, in a statement. “It results in the Montclair extension not moving forward simultaneously with the Claremont portion of the final project segment.”

“In the coming weeks, the construction authority staff and board will discuss our next steps,” Balian added. “The journey continues.”