After more than four years of work, Cesar Chavez Boulevard reopened to traffic Tuesday as a high-speed rail underpass connecting the southern ends of downtown Fresno and Chinatown.
Work on the underpass, which allows drivers and pedestrians to travel under the future high-speed rail tracks, began in summer 2021. The reopening follows last summer’s reopening of Tulare Street as a high-speed rail underpass. Previously, Tulare Street had been closed since 2017.
More closures are slated for streets that connect downtown Fresno and Chinatown, though the upcoming work is planned for faster completion.
Augie Blancas, a California High-Speed Rail Authority spokesperson, said Wednesday in an emailed statement that Mono Street will be permanently closed to traffic. Fresno Street, which is already an underpass below the existing Union Pacific Railroad tracks, will close when work begins there later this spring.
“Fresno Street will remain an underpass but will be reconstructed to allow traffic to travel under the Union Pacific and high-speed rail tracks safely,” Blancas said.
He said the Fresno Street construction could last through spring or summer 2027.
The rail authority has said separating roadway traffic from rail lines, through overpasses and underpasses, is safer for drivers and other travelers. The grade separations allow trains and street-level traffic to move without interrupting each other.
The Cesar Chavez Boulevard high-speed rail underpass in Fresno re-opened Tuesday, March 10, 2026, after a more than four-year closure for construction. ERIK GALICIA EGALICIA@FRESNOBEE.COM When will high-speed rail’s Shaw, McKinley work be complete?
Blancas said work is ongoing on grade separations on McKinley Avenue and Shaw Avenue.
Each street will be made into an overpass that travels above the Union Pacific and high-speed rail tracks. In recent months, the work has created multiple detours on Shaw Avenue near its busy intersection with Golden State Boulevard.
Blancas said crews have installed the concrete beams that will form the “superstructure overpasses” at Shaw and McKinley Avenues.
“It’s our goal,” Blancas said, “to complete grade separations at McKinley Avenue and Shaw Avenue this fall/winter.”
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Erik is a graduate of the Missouri School of Journalism, where he helped launch an effort to better meet the news needs of Spanish-speaking immigrants. Before that, he served as editor-in-chief of his community college student newspaper, Riverside City College Viewpoints, where he covered the impacts of the Salton Sea’s decline on its adjacent farm worker communities in the Southern California desert. Erik’s work is supported through the California Local News Fellowship program.