Transit Authority Creates Bus Route to Encourage Train Use : Transportation: Line 382 will begin service Sept. 9. It is intended for people who work in the Irvine and South Coast Metro business complexes.

Some Orange County commuters whose jobs aren’t near a train station will soon find rail service more convenient.

Beginning Sept. 9, a new bus route will bridge the transit gap between the train station in Irvine and the job-rich Irvine and South Coast Metro business complexes.

The route, Line 382, will be the county’s first “feeder” bus route designed to get people out of cars and into commuter trains.

For years, transportation experts warned that commuter rail service would not work without such feeder systems. The bus service, which will run during the peak morning and evening commuting periods, was approved on Monday by the Orange County Transportation Authority.

The line will go from the Irvine Transportation Center along Alton Parkway, turn south on Jamboree Road through the Irvine Business Complex, loop past UC Irvine on Campus Drive, head north on Von Karman Avenue near John Wayne Airport to Main Street, then turn west on Sunflower Avenue and turn around at South Coast Plaza.

But attracting passengers for the new bus service could be a formidable task. South Coast Metro businesses once experimented unsuccessfully with a private shuttle to the Santa Ana train depot.

County transportation authority board members also voted to commit the county’s entire 1992 share of state highway dollars--about $164.9 million--for a segment of the massive Santa Ana Freeway widening project between the Garden Grove Freeway and Haster Street.

Work on freeway sections to the south began more than a year ago, but work on the Haster Street section is not actually scheduled to begin until 1997. Under state highway funding procedures, the money must be earmarked well in advance as part of the state’s seven-year highway improvement program, which is adjusted every two years.

Monday’s unanimous vote is a reaffirmation of the transportation authority’s commitment to keeping the $1.6-billion Santa Ana Freeway project the county’s top transportation priority.

“It’s a big hit to take all at once, but this follows our strategy of using state money for construction and Measure M money to help purchase rights of way,” said Stanley T. Oftelie, chief operating officer for the transportation authority. The $164.9 million is what is projected to be Orange County’s share of $1.5 billion in state transportation funds, which will be divvied up statewide in the next few months based on on each county’s population and the existing miles of state highways.

Measure M is a county ballot initiative approved last November that authorizes a half-cent sales tax for highway and transit improvements.

The total cost of the improvements to the Haster Street freeway segment is expected to top $275 million, but county officials hope to make up the difference by asking the state for money beyond their normal “allowance” and by shifting money from other projects.

For example, $45 million in Measure M money that had been earmarked for widening the Riverside Freeway will be diverted to the Santa Ana Freeway project. The money is no longer needed on the Riverside Freeway, officials said, as a result of state plans to allow a private firm to build and operate toll lanes in the Riverside Freeway median.

The California Transportation Commission must still approve the county transportation authority’s funding requests for 1992. So far, no money has been allocated for construction north of the interchange of the Garden Grove, Orange and Santa Ana freeways.

In other action, the transportation authority board members asked the staff to review complaints from some Dana Point home owners who want the big, noisy buses traveling through their residential neighborhood to be replaced by smaller shuttle vans.

Board members also asked Oftelie to return in two weeks with a recommended policy regarding the fees transit authority members receive for each meeting they attend. During June and July, some board members were legally entitled to collect double pay--$200 per meeting--because they were sitting both as members of the county transportation commission and the county transit district as the two were in the process of merging into the OCTA.

Transit authority Chairman Roger R. Stanton said he favors limiting the fees to $100 per meeting, but Tustin Councilman Richard B. Edgar, also a transit authority member, favors continuing the $200 rate, which would be the highest among public boards and commissions in the county.