New Line, Less Stress Starting Monday : Transit: Irvine-Riverside train link, the first to provide suburb-to-suburb service, promises 72 minutes of carefree commute.

Steve McCaughey will help make history this week simply by leaving his car at home while working in Irvine.

Instead of spending more than an hour each morning fighting traffic on the Riverside Freeway, he will ride the rails from Corona to his Irvine office in 40 relaxing minutes. His means: what’s being touted as the nation’s first suburb-to-suburb commuter train line.

“It’s going to be a lot less stressful,” said McCaughey, executive director of the Irvine Spectrum Transportation Management Association, a group that aims to reduce traffic in Irvine. “I anticipate getting a lot more work done.”

McCaughey is one of the more than 500 commuters expected to take advantage of the new line linking Riverside and Orange counties beginning Monday morning. The trains will run back and forth six times daily between downtown Riverside and the Irvine Regional Transportation Center, gliding across the 49 miles of track in about 72 minutes.

Orange County residents who work in the big city to the north have for years had the option of ditching the freeways for the rails, riding aboard the several Orange County-to-Los Angeles trains that make the run every day. The fastest-growing commuter rail line in Southern California, that route attracts 1,700 riders a day, 61% of whom say they used to drive cars.

But the combination of lower housing prices in Riverside County and more jobs in Orange County has created the need for still more train routes.

The new route will be the first in the nation that neither originates nor ends in a major city, according to Peter Hidalgo, a spokesman for Metrolink, which operates the system. “We’re trying to meet the demand of the consumer, particularly here in our sprawling Southern California region,” he said. “This is the future.”

Metrolink financed the $152-million system with half-cent sales taxes in Orange County, Riverside County and San Bernardino County, where service will be added early next year.

Sarah Catz, a member of the Orange County Regional Transportation Authority’s board and chairwoman of the Southern California Regional Rail Authority, shares Hidalgo’s assessment of the new train line’s significance.

“It’s historic,” she said. “It’s going to get lots of cars off the road” and contribute much to the economic development of southern Orange County.

It’s also going to make life easier for some of the estimated 58,000 people who live near Riverside but work in Orange County. Until now, Hidalgo said, most of them sat in their cars on the Riverside Freeway fighting bumper-to-bumper traffic in daily commutes that took as long as two hours each way.

Now there’s an alternative: They can park their cars at stations in Riverside or Corona, hop aboard the train and get off in Orange, Santa Ana or Irvine. And while en route they can read the newspaper in cushioned seats, work at tables designed for laptop computers or catch some shut-eye in the climate-controlled double-decker cars.

“Our studies show that commuters place a high value on quality of life,” Hidalgo said. “One selling point will come from people inching along the freeway who see our trains zipping by at 79 m.p.h.”

It was precisely the Southern California freeway-based lifestyle, in fact, for which the new system was designed. “Census figures show that commuters today are making more trips from suburb to suburb than from suburb to urban location,” Hidalgo said.

Indeed, many potential riders seem intrigued by the idea of catching a train to work.

Bob Launders, who works as a lawyer in Costa Mesa but lives in Corona, says that riding the train could free up time ordinarily spent just staring at the road. “I could read, I could sleep,” he said. “It will be economically better for me because I won’t put the wear and tear on my car.”

Valerie Thomas, who now spends two hours a day commuting between her home in Canyon Lake and her job in Costa Mesa, says she intends to do some socializing on the train. “You can meet a lot of nice people,” she said.

And Omar Habbas, a Corona resident, said he looks forward to riding the rails. “I think it will be something different,” he said. “I’m excited about it.”

Employers say they’re happy about it too.

According to Jan Byrne, human resources manager at Statek Corp., an electronic components manufacturer in Orange, excitement is building in anticipation of Monday’s opening. About 10% of the company’s 135 employees commute from Riverside County.

“We have 13 people who are very interested,” she said. “This will make it easier for us to recruit and retain people from the Inland Empire; right now, the traffic is so bad that we’re not really getting any new people from there.”

Riverside and San Bernardino county officials say they are encouraging commuters to ride the train by offering discounted passes for the first three months. The Orange County Transportation Authority is providing shuttle service from train stations to various employment locations. And commuters wishing to ride their bikes will be able to store them in racks aboard each train.

Planners say they expect the initial ridership of at least 500 daily commuters to more than double within two years. In the meantime, they say, all eyes are on Monday’s kickoff, to be marked by celebrations in Riverside, Corona and Irvine, where an arriving train is scheduled to break through a welcoming ribbon about 7:45 a.m.

“We feel it’s a good move,” said John Harris, principal planner for the city of Irvine and manager of the city’s train station. “I’ve been waiting for this for a number of years and I’m happy that it’s finally going to occur.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Rail Link Ready

Beginning Monday, a new rail link will connect Orange County and Riverside. Six trains will run between seven destinations. Stations also are proposed for Anaheim and Tustin. And a connection to San Bernardino is scheduled for next year.

FARE RANGES

One way: $3.50-$9.50

Round trip: 6.00-18.00

10-trip pass: 25.00-85.00

Monthly pass: 80.00-272.00

SERVICE SCHEDULE

Three trains will run each way, each weekday:

From Irvine/San Juan Capistrano

*--*

A.M. P.M. P.M. Train Number 800 802 804 San Juan Capistrano 5:08 Irvine 8:20 4:47 5:20 Santa Ana 8:30 4:57 5:30 Orange 8:35 5:02 5:35 West Corona 9:00 5:27 6:00 Riverside--La Sierra 9:11 5:38 6:11 Riverside--Downtown 9:32 5:59 6:32

*--*

To Irvine

*--*

A.M. A.M. P.M. Train Number 801 803 805 Riverside--Downtown 5:39 6:48 2:40 Riverside--La Sierra 5:57 7:06 3:03 West Corona 6:08 7:17 3:14 Orange 6:38 7:46 3:53 Santa Ana 6:42 7:51 3:58 Irvine 6:55 8:04 4:11

*--*

Source: MetroLink