Arcadia station

Arcadia station

Company type	Light rail station
Industry	Public transportation
Founded	March 5, 2016 (2016-03-05)
Headquarters	Arcadia, California , United States
Area served	Arcadia, California
Products	Light rail transit services

Arcadia station is a ground-level light rail stop on the A Line within the Los Angeles Metro Rail network. Situated at the intersection of 1st Avenue and Santa Clara Street in Arcadia, California, it primarily serves the local community.

This station began operations on March 5, 2016, as a component of Phase 2A of the Gold Line Foothill Extension Project. To facilitate smoother vehicular movement, an overpass bridge was constructed over Santa Anita Avenue in the vicinity of the station.

Previous bridge

In Arcadia, a steel railroad overpass once carried the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway between the I-210 freeway and the street level. Positioned between Baldwin Avenue and Santa Anita Avenue, this structure was declared unsafe following the 1994 Northridge earthquake and subsequently dismantled by Caltrans. The Phase 2A initiative replaced it with what is known as the "Iconic Freeway Structure or Gold Line Bridge" (IFS), a design created by Minnesota-based artist Andrew Leicester and revealed in December 2012. Leicester’s concept was chosen from a pool of 17 submissions and developed in partnership with L.A. design firm AECOM and construction company Skanska USA. The bridge features woven-basket style support columns that pay homage to the indigenous Chumash people of the San Gabriel Valley, while its underside is inspired by a Western diamondback rattlesnake.

Past services

The original Arcadia train depot commenced service in 1887, two years after the launch of the Los Angeles and San Gabriel Valley Railroad in 1885. This Queen Anne-style passenger station on First Avenue ceased operations in 1951 and was relocated in 1970 to the Fairplex, which houses the RailGiants Train Museum at the Los Angeles County Fairgrounds in Pomona. The rail corridor, known as the Pasadena Subdivision, was operated by the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad (Santa Fe) and served routes including Amtrak’s Southwest Chief and Desert Wind, although these trains did not make stops at Arcadia. The Santa Fe line provided service through the San Gabriel Valley until 1994 when damage to the Arcadia bridge caused by the Northridge earthquake led to its closure. Following this, Arcadia became a special stop for Metrolink’s Rose Bowl Game trains on New Year’s Day. In 1996, a Sprinter service ran between Arcadia and Monrovia. At one point, the station also housed a private railcar named Pine Bluff until it was sold in the mid-2000s.

It is important to distinguish Arcadia station from Lucky Baldwin's Santa Anita Depot, which was originally a freight depot relocated to the Arboretum in 1970.

The current facility was officially dedicated on August 22, 2015, with regular light rail operations beginning on March 5, 2016.

Transit connections

As of , available connections include:

• Arcadia Transit: Blue, Green, Red
• Foothill Transit: ,
• Los Angeles Metro Bus: ,