2nd Site for Metrolink Station to Be Studied

With an eye on saving $4 million, the City Council tonight will consider an alternative site for a proposed Metrolink rail station.

The location, at the end of Forbes Road off Crown Valley Parkway, would have street parking instead of expensive parking structures, city officials said.

The cost of a three-story parking garage at the site initially proposed--off Camino Capistrano near Avery Parkway--could run as high as $4.2 million, officials said.

“This station is going to be there a long time, so we want to make sure what the long-range [economic] benefits are going to be,” Councilman Thomas W. Wilson said.

City staff is asking the council to authorize spending $100,000 in state transportation funds already set aside in the Laguna Niguel budget to study the Forbes Road alternative.

“We need to know what the traffic flow would be like” at the new site, Wilson said. “We have to be sure we know the public safety issues here.”

Laguna Niguel has been working with Mission Viejo since 1992 to plan a station off Camino Capistrano.

Pooling their resources, the two cities have $5.5 million in state and federal grants to build the station.

Metrolink trains now stop in San Juan Capistrano and Irvine. The new station will be between those two cities.