New Metrolink Station to Debut Today in Tustin

Commuter rail supporters will unveil Orange County’s newest Metrolink station today--a $7-million, automated railway pit stop that officials hope will ultimately boost the line’s modest yet growing ridership.

The station, in Tustin near Edinger Avenue, is the first of several new rail platforms planned throughout Orange County. It will open for business before dawn Monday.

The new station, which features vaulted canopies and an underground passageway with skylights, also is intended to relieve parking congestion at the nearby Irvine Metrolink station.

“This is going to be a huge help to commuters who live between Irvine and Santa Ana,” said Sarah L. Catz, a Metrolink director and former member of the Orange County Transportation Authority. “It will absolutely increase ridership because it will increase convenience.”

In terms of commuter convenience, the station offers such amenities as automated ticket machines, drinking fountains, bicycle racks, newspaper boxes and telephones. However, the one amenity that it doesn’t offer commuters is a restroom--a detail that was left out for fear that it would encourage loitering and attract the homeless, according to one transportation source.

Officials such as Catz, however, said the lack of a restroom is not unusual for such platforms, and poses no real inconvenience to commuters.

“The bathrooms are on the train,” Catz said. “Besides, most people don’t linger at these platforms. Most people are racing to take care of their kids and get to the station on time. They usually jump on the train as soon as they get there.”

The Tustin platform is along Metrolink’s so-called Orange County Line, and will serve commuters destined for Los Angeles, San Diego, Riverside and San Bernardino counties. The platform does not offer Amtrak or freight service.

Officials hailed the station as an opportunity to reduce freeway congestion.

“Sitting on the 22 in bumper-to-bumper traffic is no fun,” said Tustin City Councilman Tony Kawashima, as he sat in such traffic on the Garden Grove Freeway. “If this station helps take cars off the freeway and reduces congestion, I’m all for it.”

Overall daily ridership along the county’s two Metrolink lines is about 4,500--a number that critics said is small compared with the millions of car trips made daily by county residents.

Still, officials said ridership continues to grow, and will gain an added boost from new platforms.

A Laguna Niguel-Mission Viejo station is scheduled for completion in the spring. A platform in Buena Park is scheduled to open next year. Plans are in the works for a station in Yorba Linda.

The Tustin station, built on a four-acre parcel at Jamboree Road and Edinger Avenue, offers 324 parking spaces.

Transportation agency officials said the station will help relieve chronic parking problems at the nearby Metrolink station in Irvine.

At that station, more than a third of the parking lot’s spaces are taken up by so-called second cars left overnight by commuters.

Rail commuters use the cars to get around during the workday, and then leave them in the lot when they take the train home.

“Hopefully, this new station will take some of the parking pressure off,” said George Urch, an agency spokesman.