Ventura Street to close for months of high-speed rail construction. Here are the detours
Ventura Street near downtown Fresno will be closed for months starting Monday as contractors continue work on a would-be high-speed rail route through the city.
The street will be entirely closed between F and H streets, adjacent to Fresno’s historic Chinatown district, and could stay that way through 2022, according to the California High-Speed Rail Authority and its contractor, Tutor Perini-Zachry-Parsons.
An earlier schedule called for the Ventura Street closure to start a few weeks ago, on April 26.
Detours will be in place for drivers to get around the road closure.
Traffic heading northeast on Ventura Street from Highway 99 to downtown Fresno will be diverted north on F Street to Mono Street, Mono Street to Broadway Street, and then back onto Ventura. Westbound traffic from downtown will follow the opposite detour route.
Drivers on G Street will be diverted at Mono and Santa Clara streets onto F Street to get around the construction.
The closure is to enable construction of an underpass to carry Ventura Street beneath the existing Union Pacific Railroad freight rail tracks, the future high-speed rail tracks, and G Street.
Work also continues nearby at Tulare Street, less than a half mile to the north. Both involve construction of a temporary “shoo fly” track, onto which Union Pacific freight trains will be diverted while work on the underpass continues below and new freight tracks are built.
Once the first portion of the underpass has been dug, freight trains will move to the new main track and the rest of the underpass will be completed.
