Imagine a sprawling network of roomy bike lanes, generously landscaped to calm relentless traffic. Think Amsterdam with newer buildings and fewer waterways. That\u2019s been Long Beach\u2019s goal anyway.<\/p>\n
Instead of wide post-war boulevards, roads would become slower and leaner, transforming Long Beach into a top-five global cycling city, said former city traffic engineer Paul Van Dyk. \u201cSome of that is tongue-in-cheek, but if you shoot for the moon you land in the stars.\u201d<\/p>\n
Long Beach has been working toward this vision since it adopted its bicycle master plan 25 years ago, now with mounting urgency as auto-related fatalities rise<\/a>. The biggest project so far \u2013 the Studebaker Road Transformation Project \u2013 is bringing this vision to the doorstep of Studebaker Road residents.<\/p>\n It has drawn mixed reviews.<\/p>\n Keep up with LAist.<\/p>\n If you’re enjoying this article, you’ll love our daily newsletter, The LA Report. Each weekday, catch up on the 5 most pressing stories to start your morning in 3 minutes or less. <\/p>\n ‘The intent of the design is malicious’<\/p>\n \u201cThe intent of the design is malicious \u2014 it\u2019s immoral,\u201d said Joey Schilling, who drives the road six days a week and wrote a social media post criticizing the project that drew almost 1,000 comments. \u201dIt\u2019s people who do not use the road trying to tell other people how to use the road.\u201d<\/p>\n Amid red cones and barriers, a woman and her dogs navigate the construction zones at Studebaker Road and Willow Street in Long Beach on Friday, Sept. 4, 2026. Photo by Thomas R. Cordova.The $65 million project runs over five miles from Second Street all the way up to Carson Street. It includes bike lanes, greenways and stonescape with fiber-optic cable running underneath. It is crucial to the city\u2019s long-term plan<\/a> of knitting together 300 miles of bikeways<\/a> by 2040 to bring bicycle culture to Long Beach, as well as create safer streets.<\/p>\n The massive project funded from 13 federal, state and local agencies, gives a glimpse of what\u2019s to come for Long Beach thoroughfares. The Clark Avenue<\/a> work is in progress. Pacific<\/a> Avenue<\/a> and Orange Avenue<\/a> \u201cbackbone\u201d plans are on deck. Now Studebaker Road<\/a>, the biggest, longest and most expensive, is well underway, spending the most dollars and, arguably, drawing the most resident anger.<\/p>\n Schilling, who lives near Studebaker Road actually does ride his bike to work in Seal Beach and said he is OK with bike lanes in general. However, he says the project is not practical in a community where he says most drive to work. \u201cIt\u2019s not a reasonable solution. It\u2019s not even for the greater good, that would be to appease the 95 percent who use their cars. The cost and the benefit do not match up. The cost is too high, the benefit too low.\u201d<\/p>\n Wider lanes, sturdier medians<\/p>\n The Studebaker project features raised bus stops and wider bike lanes than have been seen previously. No more flimsy bollards separating bikes from cars, said Van Dyk, the city traffic engineer who helped usher in the bikeway and traffic-calming street plan before he went on to consult on other urban bike projects.<\/p>\n The green bollards seen on Bellflower Boulevard and Studebaker before the redo often get hit by cars and can resemble thick blades of stomped grass. \u201cPeople do not like the way they look, and I agree with their frustrations,\u201d said Van Dyk. \u201cThat\u2019s why we moved towards those concrete medians.\u201c He said planners \u201clearned a lot of lessons along the way.\u201d<\/p>\n Studebaker will feature roomier bike lanes \u2013 9 feet wide compared with the old 6-foot-across version. Wider lanes will allow riders to travel two abreast for a better ride, Van Dyk said. It also makes them easier to clean. Debris-filled lanes are a sore spot with bikers.<\/p>\n The old bike lane sweeper the city used to clean narrow paths was notoriously difficult to move and use. (Fourth District Councilmember Daryl Supernaw joked that sightings of the small sweepers were less frequent than Bigfoot.) But a regular street sweeper can get into the broader lanes where it can\u2019t on Broadway and Bellflower south of Atherton. (They actually set a street sweeper in a bike lane before planning and pouring the concrete to make sure it would fit.) Still, protected bike lanes are harder to clean than lanes merely separated by paint and \u201cswept\u201d by passing cars.<\/p>\n David Raslevich, a 41-year-old cyclist who frequently rides on the new lanes on Clark, said he has noticed branches, leaves and other debris. \u201cI feel safer riding with the traffic, because they (cars) move debris out of the way for you.\u201d<\/p>\n Buses stop in traffic, not turnouts<\/p>\n One new component of Studebaker and the other newer lanes are raised bus stops. The new stops designed to accommodate bikes and buses are about five inches off the ground and separated from the road by a curb. Buses will stop in the No. 2 lane, halting traffic behind them, and pick up passengers, instead of easing out of a bus turnout.<\/p>\n Van Dyk said that change evolved from talks with Long Beach Transit, which revealed that buses would sometimes get hit when pulling into traffic. Planners reasoned it\u2019s better to have cars waiting for a bus to pick up passengers instead of forcing a bus waiting to pull into the No. 2 lane.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s math my second grader can do: What\u2019s better, 40 people on a bus wait or four people in cars,\u201d Van Dyke said. \u201cWhich is the greatest cost to society? The bus is going to be more efficient.\u201d He also contends the new system is safe; there is less ambiguity as a bus will slow down in front of a car, so the car would be more likely to stop instead of zipping around a protruding bus bumper.<\/p>\n It is too early to know how this plan will play out \u2013 the new bus lane curbs on Clark show missing chunks already from drivers that likely didn\u2019t see them. Raslevich said he has seen cars turn into the curb by the raised bus stop. \u201cThey don\u2019t know that there\u2019s an island there, so they\u2019re hitting that island, pretty much daily.\u201d<\/p>\n Councilman Supernaw, whose district encompasses the $65 million project, had reservations about the price tag before ultimately supporting it.<\/p>\n ‘All anyone asked for is a repave’<\/p>\n \u201cAll anyone asked for is a repave, to get rid of potholes and have a smooth surface to drive on,\u201d Supernaw said. \u201cShould we just forgo the bike lanes and do a straight repave? The answer was no, we wanna use the grant money for the bike lanes.\u201d<\/p>\n The city saw it as a grander vision, weaving together a puzzle of state and federal grants along with $8.5 million in local sales tax money for new transit stops, sidewalks and curb ramps that improve how all people can move through the city.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s not just \u2018I wanna ride a bike for fun.\u2019 People need it to get to work,\u201d said Jocelin Padilla, a spokesperson for the city\u2019s Public Works Department.<\/p>\n ‘Communication via spraypaint’<\/p>\n A series of community meetings were held in 2024, drawing limited feedback. But when residents later saw painted pavement markings showing the planned curbs and bike lines, \u201cthey got involved in a big way,\u201d Supernaw said.<\/p>\n \u201cWe call this communication via spraypaint,\u201d said Supernaw. \u201cConstituents see lines marked out and contact the council office.\u201d<\/p>\n Aside from the cost and the bus islands, some residents are frustrated by the execution. Leslie Goldman, who lives near Studebaker and Stearns, said large piles of dirt \u2013 at times higher than cars \u2013 have blocked residents from crossing the street or seeing oncoming traffic. Some concerns were addressed, including a bus shelter that was added due to feedback from residents.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re not saying we don\u2019t want construction done ever, that\u2019s life in the big city,\u201d she said. But Goldman contends the \u201cassembly line\u201d construction approach, as opposed to the work done in shorter phases, is leading to more \u201cnoise, vibration, dust, traffic, blind spots, trash, roadblocks, \u2026 All at sporadic intervals unknown to residents. It\u2019s not just an inconvenience, it\u2019s a hardship.\u201d<\/p>\n A ‘once-in-a-generation’ timeline<\/p>\n Padilla of Public Works acknowledged the hardship, but said the benefits would outweigh the short-term pain. She said doing the work in shorter segments would increase costs and project timelines \u2013 not a good thing when it needs to be finished by the Olympics. \u201cThis is a once-in-a-generation project,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Not all residents are wary. \u201cStudebaker is gonna be awesome when it\u2019s done,\u201d said Dan Olsen, who lives near Studebaker and Atherton. \u201cIt\u2019s new, it\u2019s fresh, the neighborhood is going to benefit. It\u2019s been a total pothole disaster for so long. \u2026 Even though there are catches and hooks, it\u2019s still worth it.\u201d<\/p>\n Long Beach still isn’t Amsterdam<\/p>\n Long Beach is not yet Amsterdam; it\u2019s still a patchwork of protected lanes and unprotected ones of varying degrees of newness. But Studebaker should be done in 2027. Pacific Avenue and Orange Avenue are next. The bike lanes and streets won\u2019t uniformly connect, but there will be more of them \u2013 Artesia Boulevard to service Jordan High, Clark Avenue near Long Beach City College and now Studebaker. \u201cLong Beach\u2019s cycling network is reaching critical mass,\u201d Van Dyk said.<\/p>\n Van Dyk and other bike proponents say it\u2019s a long game. Amsterdam itself was car-dominated until the 1970s when the Stop de Kindermoord<\/a> movement was launched in response to the high number of child deaths. \u201cIt\u2019s a generational effort; it took multiple generations to give us the infrastructure we have today,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Will any of this make the streets safer?<\/p>\n