chrisislies

Tonight I'm riding through Irvine to meet my wife at the in-laws. Which Street is more bike friendly; Alton or Barranca? I'm sure both are fine, but maybe one is more scenic/ safe... Thanks for any info.

snowman40

That's my neck of the woods.

Alton will have more traffic of the getting home type, while Barranca will be mostly empty once you get past Woodbridge as it is mostly businesses.

After Shady Canyon, you enter the business complex and traffic goes down until you get to the Spectrum.

When driving I avoid Jamboree intersections of both of these as Jamboree is almost always packed.

I'd go Barranca.

swimmer88

Barranca +1

LCI_Brian

If you're crossing I-5, there's freeway ramps to deal with on Alton but not on Barranca.

chrisislies

Barranca it is. Thanks guys.

snowman40

o yea, forgot about those......

I am usually only that way on weekends.

Rumpled

I'm not sure what stretches of the city you're talking about.
But anyways, I think Barranca has a few more lights, especially in the Woodbridge area.
If you're not too against bike paths, you could split the difference and use the San Diego Creek trail which has very few (maybe only 1?) at grade street crossing.
Also, depending upon your start and end locations you could use the path alongside the 405.

Here's some more info
https://www.ci.irvine.ca.us/civica/fi...sp?BlobID=8767

snowman40

2 actually in Woodbridge, Creek and Lake. Between West Yale underpass and Lake, it is really rough on both sides of the path with the 'smoothest' section being the middle. Past Jefferey it starts to switch sides of the creek and becomes the Regional Bike path and eventually dead ends at a construction site.

2 extra lights on Barranca, 1 at Carl's Jr and another near IUSD Admin building. Those are short reds if you get caught at them. It balances out though as you past Jefferey, Alton then has more lights as that part of Barranca isn't as developed. Barranca gets rougher once you enter the business center on the shoulders.

chrisislies

Well, I was actually riding from fountain valley to el toro. I was concerned about the irvine section of my ride because i've never ridden through there before. I really should have worried about going through santa ana up talbert/macarthur. There's no bike lane, so i had to take the right lane all the way up to Red Hill. I got there ok, 19 miles later. It was a blast.