Speaker 4: The next item is item number 25.
Speaker 1: Or from Public Works recommendation to approve the city's Safe Streets Long Beach plan citywide.
Speaker 4: Thank you, Mr. Monica. Staff report.
Speaker 5: Yes. So we know the hour. It's a little late, but we do feel this is an important plan and that we want to try to give a brief staff report. And so I will turn it over to Diego and his team to get the report.
Speaker 0: Thank you, Mr. Modica. We're here today to give you a presentation on the Safe.
Speaker 4: Streets Long Beach program. As you recall, in 2016, the city council adopted the city's Vision Zero Initiative. And this is the plan to bring a Vision Zero to Long Beach. I'm going to turn it over to Mr. Carl Hickman, our traffic engineer, and Ms.. Rachel Junkin, our transportation planner, to provide you with the report. Thanks.
Speaker 8: Thank you, Diego, and good evening. Mr. Austin and council members. I'm sure many of you have heard of the term Vision Zero before. Over the past decade or so, it has been a term a vision, so to speak, an idea that agencies can eliminate traffic fatalities or severe injuries over the course of a certain period of time . This has been a topic of major discussion in cities throughout the United States and actually in large cities throughout the world. One thing to remember or to think about as we move through our presentation is that not only are we focusing on reducing those types of collisions that I mentioned, but we are also focused on focusing on the idea that we are trying to improve the level of safety for all users of the roadway. So as we move forward, we'll have Rachel Junkin, one of our transportation planners, start our presentation. And about midway or so, I'll jump in with the engineer speak. So thank you.
Speaker 2: All right. Thank you, Mayor. Members of the city council. So in 2016, Council adopted the city's Vision Zero policy to eliminate traffic fatalities and serious injuries within ten years. So the action plan before you tonight was developed in a very data driven approach. We analyzed collision data from 2013 through 2017 to identify which transportation road users are most vulnerable. Where our most severe crashes are happening. And what crash types or circumstances most commonly lead to a fatality or serious injury. So in addition to these findings, the plan also recommends seven Keystone actions, and Carl will outline those later in the presentation. And these will help us meet our goal through a combination of engineering, design solutions, safety, education, as well as traffic enforcement. And it's important to note we aren't reinventing the wheel here. There are 11 cities in California and 40 throughout the country that have adopted a similar Vision Zero plan since 2014. And we do know that the cities that have invested heavily in Vision Zero, like San Francisco in New York, have seen marked decreases in serious traffic collisions. So the Vision Zero philosophy was started in Sweden and basically reconsiders this standard assumption that all traffic fatalities are somehow inevitable and and reframes this as as these deaths being ultimately preventable. So this includes a few things refocusing engineering standards to ensure health and safety are higher priorities, then vehicle efficiency and speed, which are also very important but not nearly as important as health and safety of our residents. It also acknowledges that humans make mistakes and that we can't prevent all crashes. But the goal here really is to ensure that when a crash does happen, it doesn't result in a serious injury or death. And this effort is especially critical now, as you can see from the chart on the right road, fatalities and serious injuries are increasing each year in Long Beach. And to provide some context. In the past few years, we've seen similar numbers of homicides as we do traffic fatalities in Long Beach. Last year, we had 30 road fatalities and 34 homicides. And it's also important to note, beyond the tragedy of lives lost, there is also a significant economic cost to consider when we talk about traffic crashes. So based on calculations from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration between 2013 and 2017, traffic collisions in Long Beach cost about 1.46 billion from expenses related to medical care, emergency services, property damage and lost productivity. And so over the course of the last year and a half, staff has conducted outreach throughout the city to get feedback on the plan. We hosted pop ups throughout the city at events, and we also had a number of focus groups and community meetings with neighborhood associations. We brought a listening bench to our events. You can see that in the photo on the bottom there where folks could sit and record their stories of how they've been impacted by traffic safety. And many of those stories are quoted throughout the action plan. And again, this is a very data driven effort, but we wanted to see what safety issues people were most concerned about in the city. And you can see on the in the pie chart on the right, the top concerns were distracted, driving, speeding. And third being the need for bike infrastructure that further separates vehicles and bikes. And about half the community also wanted to see engineering solutions used to solve these problems. With the other half kind of split between wanting to see more education and enforcement. So moving on to our technical advisory committee, so we convened a tack that met multiple times throughout the drafting of the Safe Streets plan and contributed their expertize. So we had staff from city departments, including Fire, Health, Police, Department Services, Economic Development and the port. We also had external agencies at the table, Long Beach Transit and Metro staff, and we also had advocacy and nonprofit groups. The Long Beach Gray Panthers were represented. They advocate for older adults, walk Long Beach, walk bike Long Beach and bikeable communities. And each partner played an important role, especially when we got down to crafting the recommendations. And many of these folks will be instrumental in seeing that these recommendations are carried out. And so what? We have a lot of work to do and we highlight some of our existing street safety projects in the plan. I also wanted to point out some of the education and encouragement programs that our partners in the Health Department continue to do each year. These include things like bike and pedestrian safety workshops, rodeos, pop up events, free giveaways, helmet giveaways, lights. They also oversee our annual walk to school week back to school week and Safe Driver Awareness Week. And it's a lot easier to do pedestrian and bicyclists education because you can kind of stop people on the street. But it does get tricky when it comes to driver education. So I'm excited they're launching a Drive Safe Long Beach program later this year, and this will include both drug impaired driving prevention as well as distracted driving prevention. So we look forward to working closely with health and all of our other city partners as we start implementing this plan. And with that, I'm going to turn it back over to Carl Hickman, our city traffic engineer.
Speaker 8: It was great. As Rachel mentioned prior, our report, our study and the things that we had to look at were very data driven and we had to determine exactly how were the majority of our collisions occurring in the city. And what we found was that speeding was the most frequent violation. The next problem was that people were not complying with traffic signals or signage. And then we also found that bicyclists were colliding with vehicles because they were traveling on the right. The bikes were on the wrong side of the road. Many times there are a lot of other factors involved in. There are collisions and sometimes we don't know exactly what they are. But those were the main three items. And then, although it seems to make common sense that if you get hit by a car going at a high speed, the damage would be worse. We did do some some research and we found these interesting numbers where if you were hit by a car at 20 miles an hour, there would be a 13% likelihood that she would you'd experience a fatality or severe injury as speed increases at 30 miles an hour, that likelihood increases to 40%. And then if you're hitting a car doing 40 miles an hour, there's a 73% chance that there's going to be a fatality or severe injury. So, again, if a pedestrian is struck at a high rate of speed, there's a very high probability that you're going to have a severe injury or fatality. And then we went a little further and decided, well, who was getting involved in these collisions? We looked at what could be done to protect the vulnerable users of the road, and we found that bicyclists, pedestrians and motorcyclists make up 14% of all of this, all but 65% of severe collisions. And we also looked at equity concerns. Many of those who walk or bike for transportation do so for economic reasons or disability. So you can see the charts on the right where we have the percentages of the different modes of transportation and the fact that, again, bicyclists, pedestrians and motorcyclists are the largest number of vehicles, I'm sorry. And people who are individual are involved in collisions. So we look at another important factor, which was who was getting involved in these collisions. Is it men? Is it females? Is it people who are older? And what we found is that men and young adults are more likely to be killed or seriously injured in collisions, and that we can target these target groups, the same men and young adults, to try to reduce collisions. You can see the chart on the right that shows the different age groups and clearly the red or the the males in this study are the higher prevalence of collisions. Then we then we looked at the charts that show where are the collisions happening? And we can see that the majority of the collisions are happening on our major arterials. And there is also a high concentration of collisions happening in downtown and central Long Beach. Again, 73% of high injury collision corridors and there are 83% of the intersections are in disadvantaged communities. So we have a very good idea of where these collisions are happening. And our next task is to figure out what we're going to do about it. So we have seven Keystone actions to to discuss in our plan to help address this issue. First, we have to dedicate resources to the safe streets, Long Beach effort, increased staffing and funding for traffic safety programs and projects. We have to address speeding. And to do that, we have to look at arterial road designs. We have to consider additional enforcement, as Susy Price mentioned earlier. If you don't have that enforcement, at the end of the day, all of the things that we are doing sometimes just are for not. So it's really important that we have our officers support us in our efforts to enforce our posted speed limits. And then from an engineering standpoint, we have to do a better job in our street designs. We have to reduce areas of conflicts at intersections. We have to build comfortable bicycle infrastructures and routes. And we have to have shorter pedestrian crossings to allow pedestrians to get out of the street so that they can avoid conflicts with vehicles. We also have to have additional education about walking and biking large scale campaigns again targeting drivers, pedestrians, bicyclists and efforts tied to street reconfiguration projects . We call them roadway safety projects, and we have to do a better job communicating to the public about our designs and what we're trying to to achieve. Item number five of our Keystone actions. We need to collect better data. Again, everything that we do in traffic engineering is very data driven, so we have to get better information about how these collisions are happening. We need to improve and be able to be more transparent, providing before and after data to the public and also to the folks that we work with to mitigate these issues. We have to partner with local, regional and different stakeholders to support safe street efforts. Talk with Metro, Caltrans, etc.. Work on grant programs. Different resources to get funding. As I mentioned, funding is critical. So we've got to work on these different stakeholders to get more funding. Also, we've got to work with our state partners to discuss, to consider automating enforcement techniques. There are ways through automated enforcement that we can achieve some of our ah of our safety goals. As you know, in the city of Long Beach about five years ago, we discontinued our use of red light enforcement systems. Maybe we should reconsider that or think about that or discuss it. And there are other options as well as far as automated enforcement goes. Item number seven, we need to emphasize automated enforcement and maybe we try to work on getting some automated speed enforcement cameras. Work on these things at the state level to maybe change some rules, change some ideas. Sometimes these these ideas are controversial at first. But, you know, we can make changes that will be positive and decrease the number of collisions if we increase the number of tools that we have on our toolbox. Again, we need to increase community engagement for our transportation projects, and we need to think about bicycle citations, diversion programs, as opposed to citations or fines. The next steps would be to formally adopt our plan to move forward with safe streets. Long Beach. We need to evaluate resources, priorities, implement Keystone actions. We need to encourage Long Beach community to sign safe a site. I'm sorry. Encourage the Long Beach community to sign Safe Streets pledges, basically as a resident committing to doing things that will make our streets safer. Promise not to use your cell phone when you're driving. Promise to have your phone in your pocket or you're not using it when you cross the street. Have individuals commit to making lifestyle changes that are going to make our streets safer. Again, safety education campaigns continue with traffic advisory committees, and we're going to also have annual progress reporting regarding our collisions. The numbers that we have and a similar data that we've discussed so far. So, again, looking for formal approval of our plan and we look forward to making an improvement on our streets in the city of Long Beach. And we're welcome and able to answer any of the questions that you might have.
Speaker 4: Thank you, Mr. Hickman, for the great report. We have a motion by Councilmember Pierce, seconded by Councilmember Turanga. We're going to go to Councilmember Pierce.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much. I'm very excited about this presentation and this action step tonight. I know that this was something that started with my predecessor in trying to ensure that we had a plan for safe streets. During my tenure, we have talked about Safe Streets. Almost every community meeting that we've had, particularly around Seventh Street, where I know we've had a lot of incidents, but also around Broadway, when we decided to slow Broadway down, it was using this lens, even though we had not yet passed a Safe Streets policy. So I'd like to. I know that it's late into the night. I definitely would like to sit down with staff and go through the agenda item and the the policy in more detail. I did have a question on what you the next steps are after we take this vote, how are we engage community members? And then is there a tool kit that will be used as we're addressing other street improvements? I know that we won't have as many as we had, you know, two years ago or three years ago. But knowing that we do have a lot of key areas that need improvements.
Speaker 8: I think what's important is that any particular safety concern that any of the council members might have, you know, we can address those items one by one when we understand and get a better idea of what the specific problem is. And we do have a so-called tool kit in mind where depending on the issue or the problem that we have to mitigate, we do have certain steps that we take, certain data collections that we have to do, and then we can, you know, determine what our solution will be. There's a variety of things on the table that I'm sure you've all heard of traffic calming. And there are different things that you can do in regards to traffic calming. But I think, again, the report that we presented this evening demonstrates that our data shows that our our biggest problem is speeding in our city. And that's a unique issue that requires unique solutions. And again, I would like to partner with our law enforcement friends and do the best that we can to see that we are enforcing our are posted speed limits.
Speaker 2: Let me ask. We have Seventh Street as a main corridor that kind of takes you from, you know, four or five all the way into downtown. And that's the exit you decide to take. Mm hmm. And I know that there's a lot of traffic. I think there's a couple of fatalities. But I know incidents because we did have Alvin come and present to our seventh Street group at maybe two years ago on a street like like seventh Street, where we have been denied in the past for things like crosswalks that like or Zorba and things like that. Could we now go back and revisit our traffic counts with this lens and possibly get approval for additional changes?
Speaker 8: Well, one of the important things to remember is that any of the changes that we decide to implement, let's say it's a crosswalk, or let's say it's even as extreme as a traffic signal. We do have rules and regulations, guidelines that are given to us by the state of California that we need to follow. So, yes, we can always go back and take another look at things, but it's not going to change the requirements that we have to meet to make those things happen. So we can investigate. Again, any of the problem areas that you might have, problem intersections, whatever it may be. But at the end of the day, even though we re-investigate or take another look, I mean, the rules and the regulations that we have to follow from an engineering standpoint are still the same. So, yes, we can take a look and we're always open to that.
Speaker 2: Well, in case this might be my last public meeting where we talk about safe streets, I would just like to say that Seventh Street needs a lot of TLC, and I hope that we can revisit how we have safety through that entire corridor. So again, thank you for all the work. I know this has been a long time coming for Shayna.
Speaker 4: Thank you. Counselor Bergeron. Good. Thank you custom Embraer and thank you for this report is very timely and that last point you made in regards to from an engineering standpoint and you had to follow rules and regs. That's the most frustrating point for me. I've had a number of traffic accidents in my district that have just really been heightened, the importance of safety. And I'm talking about a stretch of road in my district between the 17 Freeway and Santa Fe, where I've had at least five fatalities within the last two years. But it doesn't make a threat to you have any kind of. Traffic calming measures such as a sidewalk crossing or a traffic light. And that's that's become very frustrating for me because I got situates within that area who are getting very frustrated because the fatalities are happening not only like in the early evening, but there's a market and a and a convenience store nearby, a little strip mall where people have to cross the street and there is nothing there for them to cross with. No crosswalk, no traffic signal, nothing. And so what ends up happening is that the cars are speeding. It's about a mile stretch and the cars are speeding along and they don't see pedestrians and the rest is history. So that's a bit of a frustrating issue for me in that respect that the engineering may not be there, but yet we're looking at this program for Safe Streets. So, I mean, I'm I'm looking at with a jaundiced eye on this world because of the fact that if engineering and and regulations are going to come into play, I mean, it's going to be frustrating all along the way. So we need to look at that. The fact that when a death occurs and there is a propensity for accidents in that area, we need to look at it from a different lens and be more accommodating towards what is something there. And of course, the big question is where we going? How are we going to find out? Where is the funding going to come to put up a sidewalk, to put up a streetlight, a turn signal, whatever? That that's the other frustrating portion of this is that, you know, funding is going to be critical in this in this era of public safety. And yet, you know, during this pandemic and crises that we've had, I mean, is critical going to keep? However, I do appreciate this coming forward at this time. It's important. But again, I'm looking at with a jaundiced eye because I don't see that we can really have real significant change and improvements if we still have to follow by some outdated rules and regulations based on engineering. So I'm just throwing that out there. And if I sound frustrated and because my community is frustrated and angry as to what's happening in these areas. Question I remember years ago, I recall seeing some kind of report where all the streets in Long Beach were visited and there was like a ranking of the top ten most dangerous corner streets in Long Beach. And the reason I know that is because when one of those top ten streets was on my my district and the intersection of Wardlow and Long Beach Boulevard, and that was that I want to say about maybe seven, eight years ago before I came on council. Does that report still exists and will you be looking at that?
Speaker 8: Councilman Turanga I'm not sure what report you're referring to, but I would be willing to take a look to see if I could find it or I would be able to go out and do another investigation of that intersection. Again, I respect your comments about the streets or the intersections that you're concerned about in your district. So please feel free to contact my office and we can open up a fresh investigation of those locations. And again, you know, we do need to follow engineering standards. I won't get into all the discussion and the explanation and the reasons why during this meeting at such a late hour. However, again, I welcome any investigation that you can present to us. We'll definitely take a look.
Speaker 4: I appreciate your response tonight. And I do appreciate the fact that the hour is late. And I am talking specifically about marriage in my district. So there will be a hopefully it will be a time where I can sit down with you and my staff and revisit some of these areas of concern. Thank you very much.
Speaker 2: This is Rachel Junk. And I would just like to point out in the action plan in appendix B, I believe it is, we have a ranking, I believe, top 40 intersections and corridors that came out out of our 2013, 2017 collision analysis. And that's where we'll be focusing a lot of our attention going forward. So Appendix B has our high injury network.
Speaker 4: Thank you. Councilmember Mongo, you're up.
Speaker 2: Thank you. A couple of things. Let's talk state law since state law regarding speeding. Does this plan talk about any items that we can bring to the state legislative committee for consideration and advocacy?
Speaker 8: There were recent attempts by many agencies within the state of California that presented a bill to legislature to change the way that we set our speed limits. That bill last month, I think it was in early June, was shot down again. Many of the folks want to keep things the way that they've been for many, many years. I won't go into the way that we set speed limits again. We'll be here too long. But. So that item has been looked at and the idea got all the way to the state legislature. And then it was shot down the way that we set our speed limits. Now, what I will say about speed limits is that to support our plan that we've presented this evening, we have already proactively started looking at streets within the city where we can reduce speed limits under the current guidelines that we do have. And we're looking at locations, corridors, segments of roadway where we can reduce speed limits on average, typically a five mile increment reduction. So we are already started along that path where we can reduce some speed limits.
Speaker 2: Councilmember Alston, who's the maker of the motion to deliver and file. I remember also your muted.
Speaker 1: Councilwoman Pierce is the maker.
Speaker 2: Of the.
Speaker 4: Baker. Okay.
Speaker 2: Great. So I would like to initiate a receiving file city clerk. Or it's an adoption.
Speaker 4: This is an adoption of a group.
Speaker 2: So I would like to add a friendly amendment that the plan include strategies to continue to pursue with state legislation. Oftentimes on bills come forward. They don't last their first or second or third time. And we need to be persistent in continuing to change those laws. There are more locally elected individuals who are currently in the state legislature than almost ever before in our history. This is a very recent thing in the last few cycles of elections, and so those individuals are more likely than ever to understand the perils that we deal with in cities like this. So I would love for that to be a part of the motion. Except in. Great stuff. Are you able to tell me, does this plan identify any specific. Implementations. I hear the strategies that are considered, whether they're lane narrowing or any of these things, but it doesn't say we're going to do a road diet on the street or we're going to do this on that street. I think there's some misinformation out there. This is more like a tool kit. Is that accurate?
Speaker 8: Well, I think that this plan is a very comprehensive plan, city wide. That's a very macro level. Look at some of the ideas that we have to solve our issues. You know, it doesn't get into the specifics of a project, one or another. However, as we do move forward with this plan and its adoption, we will be getting more specific with our projects, more transparent, more sharing and educating of the public to make sure that we're making the right moves and that our funds are being spent on projects that are accepted by the community. So again, what? Go ahead.
Speaker 2: So that's exactly where I was looking to go, because when I was elected, I was quickly met with an implementation of a previous plan that I was not even notified about, nor was the community. I will say in the last eight weeks I've received more compliments on bike bollards than ever as an elected because I think that people are biking to and from. But I still feel that the presentation needs the determination, the implementation needs to have that connectivity that the plan prescribes. And never before have I had people actually ask me for protected bike lanes implementation. And my answer to them is, please share with your neighbors and see what kind of feedback you get. But you're not the first person to tell me recently, so I'm just for consideration. As we move forward through COVID, I know some of our council offices are open to allocating some funding, but we need to connect some of these bike lanes to parks because individuals are stuck in their homes or having less opportunity and access than ever. I know that on any given days on our bike is our only way we leave the house. So just some things to consider, but most importantly, that council office notification and community input will happen before any of the strategies included in this this plan are implemented. And so as long as that is affirmed, then I'm more comfortable supporting the plan.
Speaker 5: And Councilmember, this is Tom. I want to jump in on that. So you're correct. We are not picking streets or specific projects in this plan. That's very clear. But you are tonight and we wanted to give you this presentation because this this is a policy shift. And this is going in the direction of Vision Zero. And we wanted to make sure the council understood that. And so when staff are looking at projects and designing them and thinking about things and doing those outreach, they will be looking at it with this in mind. And so we wanted to make sure that you all were aware of that and had a chance to give input. And then of course on specific projects, we will be doing some more that engagement and trying to get some community buy in. But it will start with a kind of lens of doing some things that are a little different than just a traditional street in every single, you know, and for every project. But looking at some of those more creative ways to lower accidents and to make them safe for everybody.
Speaker 2: Well, I'm confident, at least in the presentations I've had from Elvin and others that come to our community meetings, that the team is doing the due diligence that's necessary. And I appreciate us discussing that in detail. Thank you, Mr. Modica. And with that, I will be supportive of this item.
Speaker 4: Thank you. Next up is Councilman Richardson.
Speaker 3: Thank you, Councilmember. So this is you know, I've been paying attention to this for a long time. I think the first conversations were back in 2014. The data at that point showed that consistently one of the deadliest intersections was Atlantic and Artesia. I like where we've come since then. I look at this plan. There's a lot that I write that I like to highlight. So specifically, under each of these Keystone actions, it calls out very easy to understand it because of the timeframe, whether these can be complete within one year and three years. That's really easy to understand. I love that. It points out whose responsibility is it to do each part of this plan? It calls out, you know, where does the city council have to take action? Where does the public works department or the health department have to take action? I think that's that's really good. I'd like to see that utilized more. When these plans do come back. We do we deploy a lot of plans where it says ease of implementation. I think, you know, it's some are very easy. Some are very difficult. And it helps set those expectations. So those are are really good. I love that. It acknowledges acknowledges equity. It talks about barriers and acknowledges I don't feel like that. You go to the appendix rather than showing just like the worst intersections in the city, it's more clear and talks about which ones are more dangerous for bikes, which ones are more dangerous for cars, cars versus bikes and all these other things. I think it's easy for us to look at it and see that there are certain parts that you see that pop up a lot. I just look at these these three or four lists. I see. Well, Street comes up often. I see Artesia Boulevard, the Alamo. That tells me that we we need to be making sure that our investments align with those corridors so we can make them safer. If the priority is really to preserve life and have a safer experience, we get what the data tells us. So know I'm hoping to see our teams report above our for example. I mean, that project, it's funding, it's been funded, you know, through metro coffer projects for years and you know, haven't seen a lot of movement on it. I would hope that when we go forward, we can prioritize, you know, projects like that, big projects pop up on every one of these lists. Yeah, a lot of these Boulevard Artesia down the avenue in Atlantic of Artesia just takes the street. Take the money. It's the street. Make it safe right there where an elementary school and high school is. Make it a priority. Make it safe. So I like this plan. I like it a lot. I think I think the message that I'm from I support a Vision Zero since 2014. I support it today. And I think we should just now get to work. Yeah, I think that's that's all I can for my comments on this. Thanks.
Speaker 4: Thank you. Members in the House Unified.
Speaker 2: Thank you. Council Member Austin. I guess this is a really great presentation and plan. Thank you. To go in your department for this very, very detailed presentation. I think that, you know, it's very needed at this time. I know that we have a lot of accidents in in my district and particularly, you know, some of them are because of reasons you've already explained in your presentation, like, you know, driving too fast. And I mean, just just weeks ago, we had one of my residents was killed and his his. Dog was killed on Sixth Street and Magnolia and. You know, it was just horrific. So if we can try to, you know, think about things before this happen, that would be great. I know that, you know, sometimes we we are kind of forced to look at things after someone has passed. But I think that with this plan, I think that it'll be very, very good to help us in in kind of foreseeing what could happen so that we can prevent. That's another thing that that's been happening in a lot of my in my area is, you know, street racing, which is not good, or showing off with what neighbors call cars doing donuts in the middle of the streets or in the corners, you know. Is there anything in the plans to address that?
Speaker 8: I think it's important that we address those items with support from law enforcement. We do get notified a lot. Residents tell us that people are doing donuts in the middle of the intersection and that there's, you know, regular speeding and may even know who the person is is doing this. So, again, we're going to be looking to law enforcement to provide us that support to to mitigate that problem.
Speaker 2: Wonderful. Wonderful. Yes. And I I think that one of the things that was mentioned, like you said in earlier items, was the enforcement part of it. So I think that that in conjunction with this plan is going to really help us prevent some of the accidents that could happen. So I'm really excited to see this plan coming forward, and I look forward to having you working really close with my office so that we can assist and also tell you what our problem areas are. And you so much for speaking with us to this very late being. So thank you for that.
Speaker 4: Thank you. Councilmember Price.
Speaker 2: You council in Austin. I just wanted to just take a moment and thank staff. This is a project that I've been aware of for years through my day job and working with knits, and I'm really glad that the city is taking part in the initiative. I know staff put a lot of work into tonight's item. I know we're all really tired and we're going to want to pick apart this data. I think individually for our own districts. I was particularly interested in that slide that you put up, Mr. Hickman, showing where the majority of collisions are, the the collision activity throughout the city. So that's that's a chart I'm going to want to take a look at with you down the road to look at mitigation measures in my own district, for sure. But I just wanted to take a moment to thank staff. You guys are just fantastic. And I think one of the most difficult conversations topics that I have with my residents is centered around traffic all the time and changing traffic patterns and traffic calming measures. They seem to be the most passionate conversations that we have at times, certainly before COVID, they were. And so I think that having this presentation tonight and showing where we're headed in the future is really important. So just to thank you and appreciate the presentation.
Speaker 4: Thank you, Mr. Supernormal.
Speaker 3: Thank you. As staff reference the hours late. So I'll make my comments very brief. I did have one question about the presentation. I think it might have been on page ten or slide ten, and that is the chart showing the years of the total fatal and serious injury collisions. Is there a reason we don't have data for 2018 and 2019?
Speaker 2: Sure. So this effort began in late 2018. So we utilize 2013 through 2017 data. Of course, we work closely with PD to keep our collision database fresh in public works. But the in-depth analysis that really fed into this plan was based on that 2013 to 2017 data. So if you have specific questions about more recent data, we'd be happy to supply you with that.
Speaker 3: You know, I appreciate that. But we have a major policy decision in front of us tonight. It's almost 11:30 p.m.. Beyond that. We've had a lot of experience with some of the principles here, as is applying to our bike boulevards and whatnot in our district. And every conversation I've had has been with a former director of Public Works. So it's a little unfair to staff who's here tonight to go through this stuff. I guess for that reasons, you know, I'll agree with your anger. If I sound a little frustrated, it's because our residents are and as you mentioned, that ours is late. And for those reasons, I won't be supporting tonight. Thank you.
Speaker 4: Okay. Well, I'll take the opportunity to weigh in as well. I did have a couple of questions. And looking at the appendixes, I'm a little confused. One street that I think is the major, major issue, and that is the Alamo Boulevard. And I don't see that on the corridors of high injury or intersections or. Of bicycle corridors or motor vehicle or motorcycle intersections. But in the report on page 38, there is at least two deaths on Delamar Boulevard at intersections. So I don't want to challenge the data here, but maybe I am challenging their data. The Alamo is a is is a street that is as you know, we've we've seen multiple deaths, multiple collisions on that street as a result of speeding. And to your credit, Mr. Heckman, to the department traffic engineer, we've really been creative and bold and tried to mitigate those issues. My question is regarding where we're now. Tonight, we will adopt a plan and I expect it will be adopted. It's a major policy shift in direction and there will be potentially some resource budget implications. I'm curious to know what we have been doing leading up to this moment. Have we not been implementing this philosophy of Vision Zero and how? Will after we adopt this tonight, will things change?
Speaker 8: That's a very good question. And let me answer by saying that as a professional engineer and the engineers who were before me and my predecessors, I'm 100% confident to say that they had safety on their minds. That was their number one priority as well. That's the ethical code that we follow, that, you know, safety is our number one priority for everything that we do. So I highly doubt that there's any change there. However, what we're doing tonight is adopting a formal policy that city wide. We are moving forward with a formal policy to to create change and to create new ideas and to be open to to possible things that we may not have seen before in our city. So I think that's the main core of what we're trying to accomplish tonight, is that we're we're formally adopting a policy that's going to allow us to have a little bit of freedom and possible funding, as you mentioned, to move forward with some of our ideas to make changes that are going to improve the level of safety on our streets.
Speaker 4: Maybe you can speak to it or. I know I had a conversation with the city manager just a little a little earlier today, a but earlier today, maybe about 10 hours ago. But can you talk to me tell us a little bit about the funding for for the Vision Zero projects that we identified, where we would find those find those resources. Well, as many.
Speaker 8: As I mentioned earlier. You know, one of the sources that we do have is we we regularly apply for grant sources of of funding, whether it's through Metro Caltrans and even other smaller amounts of money that are available out there. And when we get these these funds, we apply them to projects and we try to implement our ideas that we're talking about this evening, things to make our roads safer. And there are projects out there that champion our causes that we apply for. We compete statewide, and we are successful in many occasions on getting what we call other people's money. And additionally, we will be moving forward to approach our city manager and others to find additional funding sources to accomplish many of these goals. So as we move forward, we want to make a positive change.
Speaker 5: Councilmember, as you and I talked about, this document that you're approving does say that you want us to invest in this and look at this. It does have those kind of goals and aspirations there. The good thing is there are a lot of funding sources out there that are non general fund that help with our transportation. But the budget is the overriding document. So every year we have a lot of plans and say these are all our needs and this is what the council has priorities for. And then we look at that every year in the budget. What can we find to move those initiatives forward and then what the priorities are? So you're not committing today to anything specific. This isn't putting it on a on a automatic payment plan or anything like that. It's but it is saying that this is something that's important and we should continue to look for funding.
Speaker 4: Thank you for answering that question in the clarification of city clerk. Are there any is there any public comment on this? Yes. Our first speaker is James Rossi cello. Your time starts now. Yeah. James Rash. Hi, folks. Too late. The agenda is document states. City Council action on this matter is not time critical. There's enough controversy surrounding road diets and the vision zero vision that it be in the best interests of the people alarmed to postpone action on this item until after the November election. Excuse me. I'm a resident of the second District, directly affected by the modifications to the Broadway corridor. I'm especially interested to see the city remain uncommitted on this issue until after either Mr. Fox or Ms.. Allen is elected as they hold largely opposing positions on the benefit of the modifications and their debate should benefit citizens of all districts. To the traffic engineer. What does your data tell you about virtually no motorcycle traffic cops issuing citations? No radar speed enforcement cops issuing citations? I don't recall the last time I saw a cop citing a driver like for a rolling stop, which have become ridiculous. There's almost no stopping anymore. What is your data tell you about that? Could increased enforcement by live personnel be constructive there? Finally, I'd like to encourage the council, mayor and city government to honor the spirit of full transparency in their work for the public, not just the letter of the law. Government's got a long way to go to regain the trust of the people, and that's probably the best and simplest way to begin the journey. Thanks. Thank you. Our next speakers and control your time starts now.
Speaker 2: Good evening. And Cantrell. And who doesn't want safe streets? But. Street. Narrowing road diets and roundabouts may help reduce speed, but it seems to me they cause different.
Speaker 4: And.
Speaker 2: Serious problems. Take Ocean Boulevard. When it was reduced to one lane in each direction, it resulted in motorists backing out of diagonal parking spaces into a bike lane and on growing traffic. Having only one lane on a busy street, results in emergency vehicles having to go against traffic. And slows.
Speaker 4: Response time.
Speaker 2: The roundabouts are hard to see, especially at night, and cause a traffic hazard. The narrowing of.
Speaker 4: Broadway.
Speaker 2: Resulted in many accidents until most drivers learned to avoid it and use other streets. This. Staff report says that. 40,000 deaths, traffic deaths. Or nationally. And tonight, I think I heard Mr. Hickman say that in 2019, there were 30 traffic deaths.
Speaker 4: In Long Beach.
Speaker 2: I'm wondering how many of these deaths. Involved alcohol use. Phone use. Many of these things that we can't change. And I really doubt. That all of these efforts to slow traffic down. Are going not going to be worth the. Amount of money that it's going to take. My idea of a safe street is one with no potholes. So I would suggest as. Some others have.
Speaker 4: Indicated that you postponed.
Speaker 2: Approval of this plan until there's a lot more information about where the money's going to come from. I don't think you can rely on grants.
Speaker 4: This sounds like it's way too expensive. Thank you. Thank you. That concludes public comment for this item. Okay. Thank you. Any other comments from the council? Uri Nunn. Let's go to a vote.
Speaker 1: District one.
Speaker 2: I.
Speaker 1: District two, District three.
Speaker 2: I.
Speaker 1: District four.
Speaker 4: Nay.
Speaker 2: District IV. I.
Speaker 1: District seven, District eight.
Speaker 4: All right.
Speaker 1: District nine.
Speaker 4: I.
Speaker 1: Motion carries.
Speaker 4: Okay. So our last item of. Let's go to item number 26.
Recommendation to approve the City’s Safe Streets Long Beach Plan, a policy document that lays out a framework of Keystone actions to guide the City in its efforts to eliminate traffic related fatalities and serious injuries by 2026.  (Citywide)