Rancho Cucamonga
The City of Fontana Transportation Center opened as an infill station on Metrolink on November 22, 1993. The stop consists of a single side platform along the north side of the single-track line. This platform begins 200 feet west of the Sierra Avenue and ends 350 feet east of Juniper Avenue grade-crossings. At the western end of the platform is the station’s bus loop. Tt is an odd shape with the main portion of the loop with 4 bays (2 on each side) at the end of Nuevo Avenue, and an additional one-way branch of the bus loop with 4 additional bus bays leading to Sierra Avenue. The space between Orange Way and the branch of the bus loop is a greenspace, Santa Fe Park with the bus bays having the park not the railroad behind them. The rest of the area along the platform is the station’s 309 space parking lot that stretches west to Juniper Avenue with entrances from the ends of Bennet Avenue and Rosena Avenue.
For passenger amenities there are just 5 shelters running along the platform. These each have Spanish tiled roofs held up by white stucco columns. One of these at the end of Bennet Avenue covers TVMs with black lettering saying “Fontana Metrolink Plaza” below the roof line. At the western end of the platform is a ramp that leads up to another small shelter and a bench about 5 feet above the platform. This elevated area is a lookout to the parking lot and platform, but serves no other clear purpose, except maybe as a mini-high platform if single-level cars with traps and steps are ever redeployed to Metrolink (from 2008 to 2010 Metrolink briefly ran ex-NJ Transit Comet I railcars leased from UTA FrontRunner). This canopy design extends to the bus loop with 5 covering bus stops and one covering a small building that I assume includes a non-public break area (and restrooms) for bus drivers.
Photos 1-31 taken on February 26, 2012
