As a child, Rachel Santos used to line chairs up with other neighborhood children and pretended to ride what was her version of a make-believe street car. Her uncle, after all, worked as a street car operator for many years in East Los Angeles, an area not previously familiar with public transportation.

But now, for the first time in nearly half a century, public transportation will take East L.A. residents like Santos from East Los Angeles to downtown. More than 100 of those residents gathered at the East L.A. Civic Center Sunday morning to enjoy live performances of Chicano rock, to taste food from all over the city and, first and foremost, to celebrate the long-awaited opening of the Gold Line Eastside Extension.

The day was bright and sunny and made even brighter by the swarm of workers in yellow Metro T-shirts greeting the first passengers on the new light-rail cars.

"We accomplished a landmark feat," Santos said. "The Gold Line will now help young students, and people going to and from their work, to go to different locations all around Los Angeles."

The Gold Line runs six miles from Union Station in downtown L.A. through Little Tokyo, Boyle Heights and into East L.A., ending at Atlantic Station.

Sunday's gathering at the East Los Angeles Civic Center was the first of three ribbon-cutting ceremonies hosted by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

Gloria Molina, an L.A. County Supervisor and MTA Board member, spoke at each of the ceremonies, dedicating the $898 million project to East Los Angeles residents. She also dedicated the project to Edward Roybal, the late congressman Molina proposed to name the project after.

"It was his vision that many of us undertook after he started," Molina said. "We are so sorry that he did not live to see the line open, but I think he knew, and he inspired most of us to carry on his good work."

Molina did not spend much of her opening speech on her longstanding concerns with the project's safety. Mando Robles, a Boyle Heights resident, echoed Molina's concerns.

"My biggest worry is with pedestrian traffic and driving traffic, because I do not see any guard rails between the street and the Gold Line," Robles said. "I know the way people drive in East Los Angeles, and all of that just looks like an accident waiting to happen."

But Molina stuck to optimism during during her minutes-long speech at the Civic Center, citing the challenges overcome in opening the Gold Line.

"Our public transportation must be accessible, it must be safe, it must be affordable and, of course, more importantly, it must be available to all points in Los Angeles," Molina said. "Los Angeles County is a very tough area, unlike any other, but our ambitions are very big."

Still, despite any concerns with safety, Santos said she has waited long enough for the line to open in her community.

"I finally have the opportunity to ride the train and leave my car at home," Santos said. "I can move around in the community, go to Pasadena to shop and I can finally go to events I want to enjoy with family members in other parts of the city."

Construction of the light-rail began in 2004, but it really started long before that for Art Herrera, co-chair of the project's Review Advisory Committee, or RAC.

Herrera, a 72-year-old Air Force veteran and retired Sears supervisor, has been working with others for more than a decade to bring a rail system back to East L.A., a transit-dependent community that's felt ignored for 50 years.

Born and raised in East L.A., Herrera says seeing the light-rail trains brings back memories of the old streetcars that were dismantled to make way for buses in the mid-1950s and early 1960s.

Standing on the platform at the East L.A. Civic Center Station, Herrera beamed with pride and a sense of accomplishment for his community as he talked about the opening day of the Gold Line.