Long Beach will look for ways to improve how it addresses street lighting issues, as a way to increase visibility and overall public safety for residents.
The City Council last week requested that the Public Works Department provide a comprehensive report on the city’s street lighting infrastructure, maintenance practices, public safety impacts, and proposed standardized lighting guidelines. City staffers will return to the council with the report within 90 days.
City leaders shared that street light outages and dark spots in neighborhoods and along corridors across the city have continued to be a concern for residents.
“Since I was sworn in as a councilmember of the Sixth District in 2020, I’ve heard consistently from residents and local businesses that lighting is a major public safety concern,” said Councilmember Suely Saro, who spearheaded the item, with support from Councilmembers Megan Kerr and Tunua Thrash-Ntuk. “Community members have shared that dark streets in the corridors affect their sense of safety, making it hard for pedestrians to be visible, as well as creating challenges for people traveling at night.”
Adequate lighting enhances visibility for pedestrians, bicyclists and motorists; supports crime prevention strategies; increases community perceptions of safety; and encourages evening economic and recreational activity, according to the staff report.
Making improvements to street lighting may also improve traffic safety – something Long Beach is also working on – as illumination enhances nighttime visibility and can reduce traffic collisions and pedestrian injuries, officials said.
The item is intended to give council members and residents a better understanding of how to find solutions for street lighting issues and improve public safety, Saro said during the Tuesday, March 10, meeting.
There is currently no uniform process, officials said. Responses to outages across multiple blocks, for example, have a standard of 60 to 90 days for the Public Works Department to respond, but it could happen within a week or two. City leaders said that it is “unsustainable” not to have clear transparency, when residents could worry about not having street lights for that time.
The report on the city’s lighting system will include an overview of the history of street lighting standards in Long Beach, including how brightness is measured, uniformity standards, and identifying the brightest standard fixtures currently in use, according to the staff report. It will also compare Long Beach’s standards to those of other comparable cities and outline best practices in municipal lighting policy.
The report will also describe where lighting exists throughout the city, including a mapping or inventory of fixtures, identifying areas with limited or inadequate lighting, and explaning how lighting placement decisions are made.
There will also be recommendations for appropriate alternative standards for designated historic districts and landmarked areas citywide, which can have their own challenges, different from regular street lighting, officials said.
The report will identify which department or division manages, maintains and inspects the lighting system; outline standard procedures for reporting outages; describe the process from notification to repair; provide average response times and backlog data; and explain how brightness levels are evaluated and measured, according to the staff report.
Long Beach will also address the increased vandalism of street lighting infrastructure, associated repair costs, geographic patterns, and strategies to reduce vandalism and protect public assets.
“As the city is experiencing street light outages that have been ongoing throughout all of our neighborhoods and in the Fifth District, while we know some of them are related to aging infrastructure, others are a result of vandalism and copper wire theft,” Kerr said, “and knowing the why is important as we work on maintenance plans and proactive issues to limit these kinds of issues.”
In the report, Public Works will explain current practices for notifying residents about outages, scheduled maintenance or upgrades, and identify opportunities to improve public communication, according to the staff report.
The council also asked Public Works for recommendations on standardizing lighting guidelines for the city, including proposed minimum illumination standards, uniformity targets, maintenance benchmarks, fixture selection criteria and prioritization strategies for upgrades in areas with demonstrated public safety needs.
The guidelines created will be included in the next five-year infrastructure planning to ensure equitable implementation across neighborhoods, officials said.
“Street lighting is a fundamental pillar of our public safety infrastructure,” Thrash-Ntuk said. “When it comes to dark spots in our neighborhoods, this can be and lead to very dangerous conditions, and when we improve these conditions, we aren’t just changing light bulbs; we are improving the quality of life immensely for our neighborhoods and neighbors.”