Irvine Connect to extend route after first-year success

The Irvine Connect free shuttle service is set to expand beyond the original route launched last year as a pilot project.

In the first year of operation, ridership numbers exceeded 141,000 boardings at some 70 stops.

The city now plans to extend the existing Yale-Barranca Route north along Portola Parkway and consider two new routes.

Irvine Connect, with 20-minute frequency, is used by senior citizens, high school students and other locals headed to Kaiser and Hoag hospitals, retail centers and community parks.

Woodbridge High student Xander Lee often rides to Woodbridge Village Center and Irvine Spectrum Center.

“The ability to see where the buses are, live on my phone, is what I like,” he says. He’s looking forward to the summer and being able to use the service even more. “I plan to go to all sorts of places with my friends.”

Proposition 116 state transportation dollars have underwritten the service.

The Yale-Barranca expansion calls for adding another bus to help handle five new stops – including Northwood High – by July.

The city will take six months to further analyze potential Jamboree-UCI and West Barranca shuttle lines. A Great Park route is being studied, too.

Another Woodbridge High student, Mia Makarem, enjoys convenient leisure trips on the shuttle but “when I don’t have a ride home from school, I also take it.”

Makarem calls Irvine Connect “teenager-friendly.” She plans to climb aboard for her summer job commute. “I feel safe when riding with my friends or even alone,” she says.