How often does Long Beach hand out traffic tickets on its popular beach bike path? The answer, at least for the last five years, is rarely, if ever, according to a series of public records requests made by the Long Beach Post.
The Long Beach Police Department had no record of issuing any citations for exceeding the path’s speed limit or for the illegal use of electric scooters, mini-bikes or high-powered class-3 E-bikes between Jan. 1, 2020, and April 21, 2025.
Police also had no record of confiscating any motorized minibike or pocketbikes illegally ridden on the bike path, an enforcement tool they have at their disposal.
It wasn’t until recently that the city authorized the use of e-bikes and e-scooters under set speed limits — 20 mph for e-bikes and 15 mph for e-scooters. It also required vehicles to be slowed to 5 mph at newly drawn pedestrian crossings. The rules are part of a pilot that repeals a seven-year ban on electric vehicles along the city’s beach bike path — a 3.5-mile stretch between the Downtown harbor and Belmont Shore area.
But the past enforcement data cast doubt on whether the new rules will be enforced either.
Neighbor Terry Sanford said she’s seen a spike over the past few weeks in speeding electric and gas-powered bikes along the path.
From her south-facing apartment on Ocean Boulevard, Sanford’s balcony overlooks a straightaway section of the bike path. With spikes in the evening and on the weekends, she watches every model of bike careen past. “I caught a full-sized motorcycle on it a couple of nights ago,” Sanford said.
While there have also been patrols — unheard of outside the last three months — they mostly appear at night, to clear homeless encampments, she said. Accidents still happen, often as a result of a speeding rider, according to Sanford. Last weekend, she saw a man on an electric bike collide with a child, sending both into the sand.
“We got kids with no judgment and no driver’s license,” she said. “Just seems like a recipe for disaster.”
City Traffic Engineer Paul Van Dyk said adding e-scooters to the mix could actually improve safety naturally, with more traffic along the path forcing people to slow down.
“Just like it’s really difficult to speed on a street where there’s cars all around you, but if it’s two in the morning and there’s no cars, it’s really easy to speed,” he added.
Officials said law enforcement will conduct “periodic enforcement” of the path during the six-month pilot program. They said this will include police and lifeguards.
In response to questions from the Long Beach Post, police said they’ve already been relying on “periodic enforcement” because they lack the manpower to consistently patrol the bike path.
“There are no officers currently assigned to conduct traffic enforcement on the beach bike path; however, officers do conduct patrol checks in the area and respond to calls for service,” said LBPD Spokesperson Eric Stachura, adding the department will staff additional officers to patrol beach areas this summer.
Infractions and violations police see are enforced, “at an officer’s discretion,” Stachura said.
It’s not clear how many scooters will be allowed to operate on the bike path, where there will be 16 drop zones for rental companies to stock their vehicles. Until now, the companies were required to geofence them to shut down when taken onto the path.
And this isn’t to say there wasn’t already flouting of the local laws. In 2024, the city logged 11,683 complaints about scooters through its online app. These can include idle or abandoned scooters that block the road, ramp or sidewalk, among other possible violations.
And that worries some residents, especially those who frequent the path with children or pets.
Before the City Council approved the pilot program, “we had already received complaints from some of our residents about scooters and bikes going too fast, and where’s the enforcement?” said Councilmember Kristina Duggan, who represents Belmont Shore, the Peninsula and Naples.
Prior to the council vote in April, Duggan said a survey run through her office’s newsletter netted more than 600 responses, many of which grumbled over the lack of enforcement along the path.
Duggan, who has spoken with law enforcement ahead of the meetings, said “They didn’t have a lot of answers.”
“We’re already short on resources, and now we want to draw from [the police department], which is struggling with vacancies, to come and do citations,” Duggan said. “It’s not going to be a priority.”
Over Duggan’s objection, the council pushed forward with the program on the promise that it would alleviate traffic congestion on roadways by offering a structured system for scooter and e-bike riders to cut between two of the city’s largest thoroughfares without using busy routes like Ocean Boulevard and Fourth Street.
During the pilot, city staff said they will discreetly hold Lidar guns at oncoming traffic to measure speeds.
And geofencing systems can make it so that rental e-scooters automatically slow down as they approach pedestrian crossings, such as by the Alamitos Beach concessions stands, the Shoreline Marina, Belmont Pier, and Rosie’s Dog Beach.
City engineers said the pilot, which started last month, will report back with data on usage of the e-scooters, demographics of the riders, their length of trip, reported crashes and whether they comply with posted speeds.
City spokesperson Jocelin Padilla said that the pilot phase will focus on “observation and on education.”
“Really not going in for the enforcement authentication piece at this point, not yet a priority,” she said.