The City of Long Beach is using environmental justice grant funds from Caltrans, the state Department of Transportation, to develop a Community Livability Plan for neighborhoods within a mile of Interstate 710. I attended one of four project workshops Thursday night, 8/23, at Los Cerritos Elementary School in the Virginia Country Club area of Long Beach (Bixby Knolls).
At least eighty residents crowded the modest-sized lunchroom. Long Beach City Council Members Rae Gabelich and Tonia Reyes Uranga were both present, as well as several city staff. Consultant Project Manager (and recent Planning Commission appointee) Melani Smith used slides to show the group numerous ways to improve livability related to the presence of the freeway. I-710 is so close to the city that parks and schools lie in the curving arms of its ramps. But landscaping, lighting, and well-designed pedestrian pathways, among many other measures, can help it feel farther away.
Building on these examples, groups of residents identified key issues like ensuring kids have safe ways to cross the freeway and river when getting to school from West Long Beach. Even though Melani Smith made it clear that the City’s project is focused on community-level improvements and not on regional problems, the top issues for almost every group were air quality and the number of trucks on the 710. Issues like these will be taken up in the environmental impact analysis for the 710 freeway. (Disclosure: I am a consultant on the team that will be doing that analysis.) Another point made by Wrigley residents: they felt that the government agencies had not lived up to the promises they made for plantings and landscaping in return for the community’s acceptance of the Blue Line right-of-way in the 1980’s.