April 11--With ridership running far behind projections at Orange County's gleaming new train station, transportation officials are hoping the start of the baseball season will jump-start boardings.
Angel Stadium and the Honda Center -- home ice for the Ducks hockey team -- are adjacent to the $188-million transportation hub in Anaheim. The Angels open their first home stand Friday and train ridership often picks up during the baseball season.
So far, ridership has lagged at the county's transportation hub since it opened to great fanfare four months ago.
In December, the Anaheim Regional Transportation Intermodal Center -- ARTIC, for short -- saw averages of 460 weekday boardings on Metrolink and 300 daily boardings on Amtrak, according to the Orange County Transportation Authority.
The averages include ridership numbers from the former Anaheim station before trains began picking up and dropping off passengers at ARTIC when it opened in early December, OCTA spokesman Eric Carpenter wrote in an email.
The last month of the year is also typically among the slowest, Carpenter wrote. More recent statistics were not yet available.
Still, station planners had predicted 10,330 daily boardings at the time the station, which sits next to the 57 Freeway, opened.
The gleaming hub advertised seamless connection between trains, buses, cars and bikes.
Angels fans will also have the added incentive of a special Metrolink train service, called the Angels Express, which will drop fans at the ARTIC platform, a short walk from the stadium.
The $7 round-trip service operates for 7:05 p.m. home games on weeknights from the Laguna Niguel/Mission Viejo station and from Union Station in Los Angeles.
It also provides service from the Riverside station for Friday night home games.
