The opening ceremony for the Cosumnes River College pedestrian bridge was held in front of the light rail station platform on Monday morning.

The bridge extends from the parking structure of the school all the way down to the light rail station. CRC President Edward Bush said the purpose was to give students a safer option to crossing the street.

“One of the big things is safety, trying to get more students, or those who use the light rail, to use the parking structure,” Bush said. “This provides a safe way for students to get from the parking structure to the light rail station without having to cut across the college, so it is really important to provide that connection from those two areas.”

The first speaker for the opening ceremony was general manager and CEO of the Sacramento Regional Transit District Henry Li. He mentioned that since 2010 they have been working on the design and the manufacturing of this bridge.

“We used over 95 percent of the budget but we still ended up being under budget and ahead of schedule,” said Li.

Bush spoke about how he wants to improve connections between the school and the Elk Grove Center. He hopes that in the future they can build more infrastructure and make the EGC more available to students on the main campus.

“The hope is sometime in the future that this station will extend down to the Elk Grove Center and connect the Elk Grove campus to the main CRC campus,” said Bush. “It takes a lot of years for these projects to come to fruition, but you have to plan well ahead and that will hopefully be the next major transportation that will affect the campus.”

The second speaker for the opening ceremony was Chair of RT Board of Directors and Council Member of the City of Sacramento Jay Schenirer. He said that bridges are beneficial to the community because they help bring people together. The pedestrian bridge at CRC is doing that by connecting students to the school and the community.

“It is a beautiful bridge,” said Schenirer. “Bridges are about connectivity and I am really proud of it. I think our guys did a really great job and working in partnership with CRC has just been a great experience all around.”

The fourth speaker of the opening ceremony was supervisor of the Sacramento County Board and former CRC student Patrick Kennedy. He spoke about how bridges are often about economic developments, but most importantly, this bridge has an opportunity to link Los Rios and the community as a whole.

Bush said he hopes that with this opening ceremony students will learn about the light rail and start to use it for other places in the community, not just for college use.

“This is here at the college for students to not only access it to get to other colleges and other campuses of Los Rios, but also to other places within the community,” said Bush.