{"id":204669,"date":"2026-03-04T23:55:15","date_gmt":"2026-03-04T23:55:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/204669\/"},"modified":"2026-03-04T23:55:15","modified_gmt":"2026-03-04T23:55:15","slug":"long-beachs-streets-are-too-dangerous-solutions-too-slow-city-council-says-long-beach-post-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/204669\/","title":{"rendered":"Long Beach\u2019s streets are too dangerous, solutions too slow, City Council says \u2022 Long Beach Post News"},"content":{"rendered":"

Long Beach City Council members say they\u2019re tired of how long it takes to install minor traffic safety improvements and fed up with a lack of timely information from the city department responsible for them.<\/p>\n

For about 45 minutes at their meeting Tuesday night, the nine-member council took turns expressing their frustrations. They said residents\u2019 requests for new stop signs have gone unfulfilled, questions about speed bumps or crosswalks often go unanswered, and a lack of clear communication from the Public Works Department has vexed residents.<\/p>\n

In one case, District 5 Councilmember Megan Kerr said she\u2019s tried to get answers about certain traffic-calming requests since early 2023.<\/p>\n

She wasn\u2019t alone. It\u2019s sometimes taken three years to get information from Public Works, said District 9 Councilmember Joni Ricks-Oddie. Delays like that make \u201cmy office sometimes look ineffective because I\u2019m not able to provide answers,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Residents have expressed similar frustrations for years. On Tuesday, more than a dozen of them spoke during the meeting\u2019s public comment period, urging the city to act with urgency.<\/p>\n

Many of them cited Long Beach Post\u2019s reporting<\/a> that fatal traffic collisions have spiked to their highest point in more than a decade, despite the city\u2019s stated goal to eliminate all traffic deaths and serious injuries by 2026.<\/p>\n

\"visualization\"\/<\/p>\n

\u201cResidents all over the city, not just in District 2, are frustrated,\u201d District 2 Councilmember Cindy Allen said. \u201cThey feel unsafe, and they feel unheard.\u201d<\/p>\n

On a motion by Allen, the City Council unanimously voted to direct City Manager Tom Modica to report back in 90 days on several fronts, including how to expedite projects through outsourcing and adding Public Works staff to speed up traffic evaluations. They also asked for regular reports on traffic projects, \u201cquick-build safety enhancements\u201d like crosswalks and clarity on the requirements for specific measures like adding stop signs or speed bumps.<\/p>\n

Her motion comes in the wake of a series of Long Beach Post stories that showed the city has written fewer speeding tickets<\/a>, taken longer than other cities to install speed cameras<\/a> and failed to deliver on its pledge to reduce traffic deaths.<\/p>\n

Part of the problem is a backlog of requests for traffic-calming measures that Senior Traffic Engineer Paul Van Dyke said he inherited when he was promoted in January 2023.<\/p>\n

Until recently, the city was short-staffed in dealing with them. A recent city memo<\/a> highlighted \u201can unprecedented level of turnover\u201d in its traffic division. \u201cAt one point all four senior traffic engineer [positions] were vacant,\u201d city staff wrote.<\/p>\n

And residents\u2019 appetite for safety improvements has only intensified: Public Works has received 220 requests for traffic calming evaluations between early 2023 through the end of 2025, Van Dyke said. This year, requests have already exceeded that, he said.<\/p>\n

One resident, Kelsey Wise, told the Long Beach Post she\u2019s pressed for a speed bump on Orange Avenue just north of Seventh Street for months. She went so far as to create a PowerPoint presentation for her City Council member. Next, she\u2019ll meet with the Public Works Department to make her case.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Long Beach City Council members say they\u2019re tired of how long it takes to install minor traffic safety…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":204670,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[131,133,132],"class_list":["post-204669","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-long-beach","tag-long-beach","tag-long-beach-headlines","tag-long-beach-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204669","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=204669"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204669\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/204670"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=204669"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=204669"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=204669"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}