Long Beach City Council members say they’re 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.
For about 45 minutes at their meeting Tuesday night, the nine-member council took turns expressing their frustrations. They said residents’ 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.
In one case, District 5 Councilmember Megan Kerr said she’s tried to get answers about certain traffic-calming requests since early 2023.
She wasn’t alone. It’s sometimes taken three years to get information from Public Works, said District 9 Councilmember Joni Ricks-Oddie. Delays like that make “my office sometimes look ineffective because I’m not able to provide answers,” she said.
Residents have expressed similar frustrations for years. On Tuesday, more than a dozen of them spoke during the meeting’s public comment period, urging the city to act with urgency.
Many of them cited Long Beach Post’s reporting that fatal traffic collisions have spiked to their highest point in more than a decade, despite the city’s stated goal to eliminate all traffic deaths and serious injuries by 2026.
“Residents all over the city, not just in District 2, are frustrated,” District 2 Councilmember Cindy Allen said. “They feel unsafe, and they feel unheard.”
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, “quick-build safety enhancements” like crosswalks and clarity on the requirements for specific measures like adding stop signs or speed bumps.
Her motion comes in the wake of a series of Long Beach Post stories that showed the city has written fewer speeding tickets, taken longer than other cities to install speed cameras and failed to deliver on its pledge to reduce traffic deaths.
Part of the problem is a backlog of requests for traffic-calming measures that City Traffic Engineer Paul Van Dyk said he inherited when he was promoted in January 2023.
Until recently, the city was short-staffed in dealing with them. A recent city memo highlighted “an unprecedented level of turnover” in its traffic division. “At one point all four senior traffic engineer [positions] were vacant,” city staff wrote.
And residents’ 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 Dyk said. Requests this year are outpacing that rate, according to the Public Works Department.
One resident, Kelsey Wise, told the Long Beach Post she’s 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’ll meet with the Public Works Department to make her case.
Editor’s note: This story was updated to correct the spelling of Van Dyk’s last name and his title. It was also updated to clarify that requests for traffic evaluations this year were outpacing prior years, not exceeding them.