Westpark's Next Trail Link Is a Gravel Road and a Bridge Over Jamboree. Comments Close November 16.

The Barranca Channel meets San Diego Creek at Main Street. Along the channel's east bank, a maintenance road owned by the Orange County Flood Control District runs northwest toward Jamboree Road. It is about 20 feet wide and nearly flat, surfaced with crushed gravel, and fenced with chain link on its western side. Large stone riprap lines the channel banks below it. At Jamboree, the road ends at a fenced driveway that opens onto the street.

The City of Irvine has published a draft plan to replace that road with a paved trail and a pedestrian bridge over Jamboree. The state's filing lists Main Street and Jamboree Road as the cross streets, places the site 0.22 miles north of the I-405, and names Westpark Elementary as the nearest school. In practice, this is the Westpark end of a much larger trail plan. The public can weigh in on its design only until 5 p.m. on Monday, November 16. Construction isn't scheduled to start until January 2028.

What the draft actually builds

The project is formally titled the IBC Multi-Use Trail Barranca Segment, city project number CIP 342303. It is short. The draft Initial Study/Mitigated Negative Declaration, dated October 2026, describes about 0.36 miles of off-street paved path. It would follow the existing maintenance road from Main Street to a point about 400 feet north of Jamboree Road.

The path's 13 feet of pavement, from the water side outward:

• A 2-foot paved shoulder closest to the Barranca Channel
• An 8-foot paved path shared by pedestrians and cyclists
• A 3-foot paved shoulder on the side away from the channel

At Jamboree, the trail rises onto a bridge with three parts. Retaining walls build up the approaches, a concrete slab bridge sits on cast-in-drilled-hole pile foundations, and a prefabricated truss bridge with chain link fencing spans the road. The plan also widens the maintenance access road next to the bridge, with new retaining walls built out into the Barranca Channel. The street-level pedestrian and bicycle connection to Jamboree stays open. In the draft's words, the bridge will provide "a continuous trail connection between the east and west sides of Jamboree Road."

The bridge is the slow part, and it arrives last

The draft estimates about 18 months of construction. Its narrative gives tentative dates of January 2028 to May 2029. Its phasing table runs a month longer:

Under that sequence, the gravel turns to pavement within the first two months of 2028. Everything after that is about getting over Jamboree. Walls, slab and truss take roughly 15 months. The truss, the piece people will picture when they hear "bridge over Jamboree," is set during the last few months, in early 2029. The draft says all equipment would be staged on site, using the existing entrances to the maintenance road.

A nine-mile plan that reaches Westpark here

The Barranca segment comes out of a larger plan. In June 2021, Irvine finished its IBC Trails Feasibility Study. It mapped eight possible corridors, about nine miles in total, across the roughly five square miles of the Irvine Business Complex. The corridors use rail rights-of-way, flood-control channels and access easements.

In that study, the Barranca Channel is Segment 6. It runs about 1.5 miles from Main Street and San Diego Creek north to Barranca Parkway, coming out between Von Karman Avenue and Millikan Avenue. The study put the full corridor at $5 million in 2021, crossings included. The draft now under review builds roughly the first quarter-mile-plus of that 1.5 miles, starting from the Westpark end. One part of Segment 6 already exists. The Kelvin bicycle-pedestrian bridge over the Barranca Channel was under construction when the study came out, and the city's CIP report lists it as completed in fiscal year 2020-21.

The south end of Segment 6 is the reason Main Street matters. The 2021 plan has it meeting Segment 4, the San Diego Creek Creekwalk, just north of Main Street. The Creekwalk is planned along the west bank, running from Warner Avenue down Peters Canyon Wash and San Diego Creek to Michelson Drive. The 2021 preliminary estimate for it was $17.3 million, crossings included. The regional San Diego Creek Trail, also called the Mountains-to-the-Sea Trail and Bikeway, stays where it is now, on the opposite, easterly bank of the creek.

The pieces are moving at different speeds:

• Creekwalk, Warner to Coronado. On June 9, 2026, the City Council considered a staff report that closed out this section's preliminary engineering and environmental phase. About $400,000 had been spent. The report estimated $740,000 for final design and right-of-way and $6.9 million for construction, about $8 million in total. The $1.6 million already appropriated from IBC Development Impact fees covers final design, and staff will come back for construction money "when a funding source has been identified or secured." The same report calls the project "a much-needed multi-use trail in a residential area lacking such facilities."
• Barranca Segment, CIP 342303. A 2024 Irvine CIP report listed it as "IBC Trails (Jamboree to Creekwalk)," still in the preliminary stage, with a $1.93 million budget. An OCTA Measure M2 attachment from 2024 described the work as preliminary engineering and environmental compliance between Jamboree and the Creekwalk, paid for with Park Fees. The October 2026 draft is that environmental document.

None of these figures measure the same thing. The 2021 numbers are planning estimates for whole corridors. The 2024 figure is a phase budget. The 2026 Creekwalk number is a project-level estimate for one section.

Main Street is where the pieces meet

For Westpark, the Main Street end is the point where the Barranca path, the planned Creekwalk junction and the existing creek trail across the water all come together.

Main Street is also picking up a new stop. On July 23, 2026, the City of Irvine approved a minor modification to a conditional use permit for a Philz Coffee drive-through at Harvard Place Auto Plaza. WhatNow reported that the store will be at 3050 Main St., in an existing drive-through building of about 3,322 square feet, with tenant improvements and minor parking lot changes. The approval documents give no opening date.

The window that closes November 16

The draft is a Mitigated Negative Declaration. That is the city's finding that the project can be built without significant environmental impact once the listed mitigation measures are in place. The issues it covers include aesthetics, noise, biological resources and transportation. The public review period opened October 15. When this post goes up on October 29, there are 18 days left.

Here is how the City's Notice of Intent lays out the process:

1. Read the draft. The full document and appendices are posted on the CEQAnet project page and the City's current environmental reviews page.
2. Send written comments by 5:00 p.m. on November 16, 2026. Mail them to Amir Ainechi, Associate Engineer, City of Irvine, Department of Public Works and Sustainability, P.O. Box 19575, Irvine, CA 92623-9575.
3. Contact the project manager with questions. The notice lists (949) 724-7370 and [email protected].

The draft says the City will review the comments it receives and weigh them as part of its decision on the project. Construction would not start before January 2028. Until then, the gravel road and its fenced driveway at Jamboree look the way they always have.

Questions about how a planned trail, a new bridge or a new coffee stop could affect a Westpark home's appeal are a regular part of my work. When a project like this moves from a 2021 study to an October 2026 draft, it's a good moment to see where your home stands. Felix Hung can run a free home valuation based on recent Westpark sales and walk you through the numbers. Get Your Free Home Valuation.