Metro’s Gold Line extension opens

Metro Gold Line trains have been making test runs on new tracks, which extend the route farther east into the San Gabriel Valley.

Crews do a final touch-up on the new Azusa Metro Gold Line station. The $1-billion project’s path through quiet bedroom communities represents a new chapter, and new challenges, for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which has never brought a rail line so deep into suburbia.

A Metro Gold Line train makes a test run on the new Foothill Extension from Pasadena to Azusa. It’s the first new stretch of passenger rail in Los Angeles County in nearly four years,

The Metro Gold Line’s new Azusa station. The Gold Line is now the county’s longest light-rail route, stretching 31 miles through Pasadena, Highland Park, downtown Los Angeles and the cultural hubs of Chinatown and Boyle Heights.

The Foothill Extension is the first to be built and opened with funding from Measure R, the half-cent sales tax increase for transportation projects that county voters approved in 2008.

Miriam Pereira, a safety ambassador, left, talks to a train operator as a Metro Gold Line train makes a test run at the Azusa station. From the line’s new terminus here, the $1.75 one-way ride to Union Station will take 49 minutes.

Larry Jarman does a test run on the Metro Gold Line’s Foothill Extension. Metro estimates the line will have about 66,000 boardings a day by 2035, with about 13,500 of them on the new extension. Supporters say the route will quickly exceed projections.

A colorfully decorated Metro Gold Line train makes a test run in Azusa. The route has brought some criticism from urbanists and planners who say the string of cities along the route don’t have the population density to support a passenger rail line.

A crew does last-minute cleanup along the tracks at the new Metro Gold Line train station in Azusa. A decade ago, support for the Foothill Extension was tepid, in part because projected ridership figures were lower than for other projects, including the Wilshire Boulevard subway and a light-rail line to Santa Monica.