Originally Posted by zephyr

Orange County is a better bike commute area than most people would imagine for southern california. Terrain in north county is generally flat, south county is varied with some rolling hills. Great to ride through the beach cities along Pacific Coast Highway. Most major through streets in my area have a wide marked bike lane on the shoulder. Many of these through streets also prohibit curbside parking, which helps avoid doors flying open while pedaling along. I don't use MUPs very often, but there's plenty of those around too, and some of them are quite useful cross town routes for bike commuters because they have underpasses and tunnels to avoid crossing traffic intersections, that allow you to ride through some cities without traffic lights to stop at. Irvine, CA is one place with MUPS like this.

Many cities around here have traffic light push buttons right next to the curb for cyclists who are stopped at a signal in the bike lane. Those things are great for early morning commutes before the school bound car traffic picks up. One other thing usually working in a bike commuter's favor is weather. Rarely under 40F on winter mornings, rarely above low 90s F on late summer afternoons while pedaling home. Very few heavy rainstorm days per year that would keep me off the bike for safety reasons, probably less than 10 days. One other good thing, there's so many thousands of cyclists around that it is quite rare for motorists to harass people on a bicycle, blast the horn, yell crap when passing by or tossing junk out the window at you. Bicyclists are generally OK around here as long as you don't do something like try to head over to a left turn lane across three lanes of high speed traffic. I get by very car light here, sometimes go weeks using bike or pedestrian transportation only. Oh yeah, there's a county wide bus line, it's cheap although not real fast, and all the buses have front load bike racks. Not a bad way to combine bike and bus to get to certain places.