Modernizing Union Station

Union Station will benefit from measure passed in 2008

California’s high-speed rail may not reach L.A., but its funding will update Union Station, right.

With costs expected to soar past $70 billion, the state high-speed rail line may never make it to Los Angeles. But L.A. could see a benefit nonetheless: help with modernizing Union Station.

That’s because Union Station would be one of the key stops on the high-speed rail route, should it ever get to Southern California. The High-Speed Rail Board of Directors had previously approved $18.7 million towards engineering and technical studies of the modernization project. On April 27, the high-speed rail board reached a final funding agreement with the Los Angeles County Transportation Authority, which calls for tapping $423 million in funds from the high-speed rail measure approved by voters in 2008.

Union Station was the last great rail station built in the U.S., but faded in the last half of the 20th century as planes became the primary mode of long-distance travel. In the last 20 years, however, it has re-emerged as the center of a regional rail and bus network that includes Metro’s subways, the Metrolink regional rail system and several regional bus systems. And it remains a hub for long-distance passenger rail service Amtrak.

But the main rail line configuration of Union Station changed little since 1939 even as the different rail lines using it had. And with the possibility that high-speed trains could be using the station, six years ago a plan was put forward to reconfigure the tracks.

The $2.3 billion project, known as Link US, will allow trains to enter and exit from both the north and south of the station, which will increase capacity for rail service and reduce train idling times. The project will include the construction of new sets of elevated train tracks over the adjacent 101 Freeway.