The application for the new Yankee Stadium, which is expected to get final approval in a City Council vote today, received a last-minute boost when Governor Pataki and Mayor Bloomberg announced yesterday they would direct the Metropolitan Transit Authority to build a Metro-North station near the stadium.

Neither the mayor nor the governor’s office would discuss the cost, but under a previous MTA capital plan the station, which has been proposed for several years but never funded, ran about $20 million. The new station should alleviate commuter traffic to and from games; it will host about 10 post-game trains serving three different commuter lines and Grand Central. The station project requires approval of the MTA board.

A director for the Tri-State Transportation Campaign, Teresa Toro, said the transit advocacy group was pleased to see the Metro-North project finally go forward, but she questioned the source of the funding.

“Will all New York transit riders foot the bill?” Ms. Toro asked. “Certainly the Yankees should be picking up something toward it.”

Ms. Toro also suggested that, because more fans presumably would be taking the train to games, the Yankees should reduce the amount of planned parking at the new stadium.

The president of the Bronx, Adolfo Carrion, told The New York Sun that the train station has long been on the radar of local politicians and is a “critical piece of the puzzle” for a more thorough redevelopment of the neighborhood.

The Yankees’ proposal to build a 53,000-seat stadium next to the team’s current home has drawn ire from some community members and good government groups who say the plans will destroy about 22 acres of the area’s parks, add to traffic and congestion, misuse more than $200 million in city and state funds, and give little back to the surrounding neighborhood. The local community board rejected the plan last year.

Stadium advocates, including Messrs. Pataki, Bloomberg, and Carrion and the city’s Department of Planning, have said the project will contribute to the revitalization of one New York’s poorest neighborhoods. The city will pay about $135 million for replacement parkland and infrastructure.

The City Council is the last stop in the city’s uniform land use process, and it is typically the venue where local politicians can make changes to projects and extract concessions on the community’s behalf.

Another point of contention during recent negotiations at the council has been a proposed community benefits agreement. A draft agreement circulated last week showed that the Yankees would give roughly $1 million a year to community nonprofits and youth groups over the length of the 40-year lease.

Yesterday, Mr. Carrion said he was hopeful there would be more money for local job training in the final agreement.

“The Community Benefits Agreement should be seen as a floor, not a ceiling, a minimum standard of care,” he said.

A spokeswoman for the Yankees, Alice McGillion, said she would not discuss the agreement until it is finalized.

Council Member Helen Diane Foster, a Democrat of the Bronx who has been the most vocal opponent of the project, said yesterday that the addition of the Metro-North station is “not enough” and that council members who seek to gain concessions for the community are “settling for crumbs.”

“This is an area where kids grow up who can give you all the stats for Bernie Williams and Jorge Posada but have never been in that stadium,” Ms. Foster said. “The Yankees need to be in every school in the area doing education programs, or building a community recreation facility. But there is nothing.”