Why is traffic so bad (Part II)

Some Bottleneck Blog readers remember when Irvine was pretty much vacant land and Lion Country Safari. Well, it now has nearly 200,000 residents -- and officials expect to add another 70,000 by 2025 thanks to massive new development around the old El Toro base and other areas. Of course, traffic is now a huge -- and much debated issue:

The city can manage to add at least 70,000 people – in part by focusing on mass transit, he said. Creating a system of pedestrian and bicycle trails, bus routes, light rail and heavy rail, [Irvine Mayor Larry] Agran said, will help residents depend less on vehicles. Councilwoman Christina Shea disagrees.Shea supports mass transit, but said it should add to, not substitute for, regular traffic planning. The city is adding too many residences without properly planning for quality of life areas such as traffic and city services, she said. "I believe our development is leading the city on a downhill spiral," she said.

The Register reports that the population numbers might end up higher than those estimate.

What do you think? Is development ruining Irvine? Or can it be successfully planned? Hit the COMMENT button and have your say!

Comments

[greg kay]

they should've built the airport instead.

[JP]

I recall reading somewhere that Irvine had the longest signal wait times in all of OC. The city has to be the worst when it comes to signal synchronization; not only do you wait for absurdly long periods of time - even if no cross-traffic exists - the protected left turn pockets are seldom demand-activated, and you'll never get to the 60 MPH speed limit anyway because the very next traffic signal will have already turned red. If you can somehow get past more than one green light at a time? Consider it a miracle.

[R. Russell]

Irvine is not exactly a successful model of traffic planning, unless you think that six lanes of dense traffic at 60 mph on every major thoroughfare is what you want. The fatality rate has got to be something. Of course somebody mentioned the stop lights. Add 30 minutes to your commute from anywhere in Irvine. That takes no innovation whatsoever.

[Michael L]

development can be succesfully planned by doing what Larry is doing. The key point is making it so people don't have to DEPEND on taking their car. There needs to be options and people like tonyE can continue to drive his car. Nothing wrong with that. However, when all of those new people move to irvine and traffic becomes intolerable the train might just look a little more appealing.

[tonyE]

Hey, no problem. The city has long had had too many lights and zillions of protected left turn pockets.

In essence, long term residents of Irvine realized long ago that our City Hall uses lots of lights to stop us so that we can meet the neighbors.

It's quite common in Irvine to have a bunch of cars, going several ways. all stopped at red lights while the "planned traffic" has a green light.

Aaaahh... the joys of a "planned community"... we even have "planned traffic jams" without traffic. So might as well bring on the traffic and use those green lights.

Mass transit in Irvine? Come on, Larry Agran is dreaming. I'll go for the bicycle trails for enjoyment, but no one is gonna put me or my neighbors on a cheap mass transit bus while we have our nice cars in the garage. Nuts.. Larry ain't gonna take my fingers from the leather covered steering wheel...