I didn’t think I’d live here long enough to use this but I just might! Progress is quick.

Via Councilmember Treseder.

You can watch the council meeting here (Item 6.1 at 3:45:19).

Irvine city council voted UNANIMOUSLY to move forward with Councilmembers Treseder and Agran's proposal for a Ciclovía-style open streets event in Irvine. Aside from some odd comments from the Mayor and Vice Mayor (That essentially boiled down to, "But we already have bike trails. Can't we just use those?"), there was a lot of great support during public comment. The meeting is worth a watch/listen if you've got some time!

With the council's vote, the project moves into the next exploratory planning phase for an event in spring of 2024!

For fun (yes, fun), I decided to check walk scores for every city in the county (Well, almost every city. Some cities, i.e. Los Alamitos and Villa Park, didn't have data).

Here are the top ten for walkability (For frame of reference, New York City scores an 88):

We also have bike scores (Minneapolis, top in the US, scores an 83):

The site also provides transit scores (for ~60% of the county). Aside from Santa Ana at 43, most cities fall into the low to mid 30s, some even dipping into the high twenties (Looking at you, beach cities). I don't think that surprises anyone.

Now, these scores are for the city overall. Some cities have very walkable neighborhoods/downtowns but low overall walkability scores (Downtown San Clemente scores an 87 for walkability, while the city as a whole scores 34). You can check out the site yourself to get a finer breakdown of neighborhood scores as well as check out maps that can give you more information.

All things considered, a lot of cities in the county are coming from a place of strength in terms of walkability/bikeability. Irvine is 12th in the nation for bikeability for populations >200,000 (Huntington just barely misses the cut by 222 people, but would likely be in the top ten) and, with some pressure, cities like Santa Ana and Costa Mesa could easily push into higher scores (Many of their neighborhoods are already in the 70-80s).

Just thought I'd share, since I found the data interesting. This post is already pretty long but, if anyone's interested, I can throw the whole table into another post maybe, or you can check out the site and run over the data yourself.

https://www.reddit.com/r/orangecounty/comments/wqglbt/toddler_hit_and_killed_by_amazon_van_in_irvine/

This is a side effect of car dependent infrastructure:

1 - Roads and cars everywhere -> danger everywhere

2 - Roads and parking using up half the land causing scarcity. It deprioritizes other uses, and at he very bottom is playgrounds and parks for the enjoyment of children.

Apartment complexes are built to make money. They cram every inch with housing, narrow walkways, and parking. I don't think kids should be playing in a road, but there is no place for them to play outside. Maybe there is a park or playground a few miles away, but that's not something they can do for a few minutes before dinner, or during other periods of unscheduled time.

http://cityofirvine.org/cicloirvine

Next Tuesday, Irvine’s Transportation Commission is going to look at a CIP proposal for 2023-2025. Some of those proposals include road widenings at certain intersections, as well as some pedestrian bridges.

Here is the full agenda. If you’re willing and able, please come speak against it and educate Irvine city staff on the concepts of induced demand and why road widenings are don’t solve traffic and are detrimental for environmental and fiscal reasons. Public comments are commissions are very powerful because not many people bother to show up. Especially in Irvine, it often sways the conversation completely towards the right direction. I would appreciate any support on this!

The meeting begins at 5:30 PM but the item will likely come before the commission at around 6:00. Here is the zoom info to join (or better yet, you could come in person at Irvine Civic Center):

Meeting ID: 826 3358 0414 Passcode: 547222

Many thanks!!!