Panel OKs Funding for Metrolink Day-Care Centers : Transit: The facilities would be built at stations in Chatsworth and San Fernando to encourage parents to commute by train. The full council must approve the final spending plan.

It’s a typical morning--you’ve managed to get the kids breakfasted and dressed, and you all pile into the car for another day traversing the vast geography of Southern California.

But instead of driving them to day care and driving yourself crazy crossing half the town on freeways to get to work, you just pop over to the local Metrolink station, leave the kids at the day-care center there and head across the San Fernando Valley on the train.

It could happen.

On Wednesday, the Transportation Committee of the Los Angeles City Council approved the last piece of funding needed to begin construction of day-care centers at Metrolink stations in Chatsworth and San Fernando to care for children of preschool age for fees between $72 and $135 a week.

The centers would be the first such facilities in Los Angeles County and among only a handful nationwide, said Cynthia Pansing, who is coordinating the project for the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission.

The committee’s action, if approved by the full council next week, would provide $250,000 to address environmental concerns and finish planning the child-care centers--which would cost about $750,000 apiece. The hopes to pay most of the cost with state transportation grants.

The idea is to encourage parents to commute by train, Pansing said, cutting down on so-called triangular trips, in which parents drive their children to day care and then drive themselves to work.

According to a study for the County Transportation Commission, if 75 children use the two centers, their parents--who would be required to commute on public transportation as a condition of using the day care--would drive 883,224 fewer miles each year. They would use 29,441 fewer gallons of gasoline, saving $73,603 per year, or just under $1,000 per family, the study said.

“One of the things that would be an incentive would be for parents to be able to drop their kids off, take the train to work and then pick them up when they return in the evening,” said Councilman Hal Bernson, who serves on the committee and represents the area around the Chatsworth station.

The centers would be operated by private child-care providers, Bernson said. If construction begins this spring, they could be open as early as next fall.

According to James Okazaki, the city’s transit chief, construction and development of the centers would be coordinated by the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission. If they are successful--and additional funds are available--similar facilities will be set up at other stations, he said.

Much of that money is coming from the state’s petroleum violation escrow account, set up to pay for demonstrations and tests of ways to encourage people to use public transportation, Okazaki said.

Karen Hill-Scott, who teaches planning at UCLA and is executive director of Crystal Stairs, a nonprofit child-care consulting agency in Los Angeles, said the centers will be effective only if the neighborhoods they serve really need them, and if prices and levels of care are appropriate.

For example, she said, some neighborhoods have few parents with young children, and others have parents who will not be able to afford private care.

Preliminary plans for the centers include fees ranging from $92 to $135 per week for infant care and $72 to $99 per week for preschool care. The actual prices will depend on the level of care the Transportation Commission decides it wants the centers to provide.