Countywide : Northern Link to Metro Rail Favored

Orange County transportation planners on Monday are likely to approve an urban rail link to the Los Angeles Metro Rail system through Fullerton instead of a more southerly route through Stanton and Cypress, officials said.

Either route would provide an easy link to Los Angeles International Airport via transfers to Metro Rail’s planned Green Line trains in the median of the Century Freeway.

After months of study, selection of the northerly path through Fullerton is strongly recommended in a staff report released Thursday by the Orange County Transportation Authority.

“The North Line is projected to carry almost twice the number of daily passengers as the South Line,” the report states--41,177 riders versus 21,233. “There is strong support from the communities along the North Line and significant opposition to the rail system from the cities along the South Line.”

The bottom line: Residents in Cypress and La Palma said they did not want trains in their back yards. Also, OCTA’s studies showed that the North Line through Fullerton would be slightly cheaper to build and operate.

Officials hope to be able to save money by using existing Santa Fe Railway rights of way, although OCTA’s staff report states that it may not be wide enough. Also, an existing Southern Pacific route parallel to the Santa Ana Freeway is being considered.

Already, OCTA officials have asked the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission to rename Metro Rail’s planned Green Line along the median of the new Century Freeway and call it the Orange Line. What’s more, they have asked the LACTC to christen the planned Metro Rail station in Norwalk the “Orange Connection” to emphasize the line’s usefulness in getting to and from Orange County. LACTC officials have been receptive, according to the OCTA staff report.

Los Angeles’ Green Line is supposed to end in Norwalk, where the Century Freeway terminates at the San Gabriel River Freeway. But OCTA officials hope to persuade their Los Angeles County counterparts to extend their rail corridor to the Orange County line so that the latter’s system will have a path into the Norwalk Metro Rail station.

The urban rail link from Norwalk to Fullerton would be the first phase of a 47-mile, $1.5-billion monorail or other type of elevated system that would eventually extend to Irvine.

But selection of the northerly route through Fullerton at Monday’s OCTA meeting does not mean construction is imminent. The project will be in preliminary planning and engineering for several more years.

Moreover, there is still some controversy about whether to build the Orange County system from north to south. OCTA board member Dana W. Reed--the agency’s strongest rail advocate--has insisted that the line will be much more successful if started as an extension of the Metro Rail system in Los Angeles. But some Irvine and Santa Ana officials would prefer that the line serve their cities first and North County later.

Assuming the northerly route through Fullerton is selected on Monday, OCTA officials said they will launch a new, 60-day study to determine future uses of the southerly old Pacific Electric trolley route. OCTA already owns the route--in part through the recent purchase of a segment with funds generated through Measure M, the sales tax increase approved by county voters in 1990.