Can Long Beach reduce traffic deaths to zero? Officials set out to try

Long Beach’s motorists and pedestrians have endured rising rates of collisions during the past few years, and now the City Council has officially declared its goal of bringing the number of traffic-related fatalities and serious injuries down to zero by 2026.

The City Council adopted a policy called Vision Zero, a concept that has its origins in a Swedish initiative to eliminate deaths on the road. The motion brought by Long Beach Councilwoman Suja Lowenthal describes Vision Zero as a data-driven project in which street design, along with education and enforcement policies, all reflect the objective of ending traffic deaths.

Officials will look at changes such as protected bike lanes or reduced speed limits, pending review of Long Beach’s traffic collision data.

“It can be a street, one corridor, one block at a time,” said Councilwoman Suja Lowenthal, who brought the Vision Zero proposal forward for the council’s approval during its meeting held last Tuesday.

Officials in Los Angeles and San Francisco are among those in other U.S. cities that have endorsed the Vision Zero concept. For now, the vote commits Long Beach staffers to analyze streets and intersections with high rates of crashes, or cases of motorists striking bicyclists or pedestrians. A report is due within about six months.

The council’s vote also assigns the City Manager’s office to form a Vision Zero Task force with members of the city’s police, public works, health and development services departments. The group would also include representatives of Long Beach Transit and Long Beach Unified School District as well as private individuals who are knowledgable in transportation and urban plaing.

“It’s really about working together, so we can see things in a new light,” said Nathan Baird, the city’s mobility and healthy living programs officer.

In Sweden, Vision Zero concepts have been incorporated into national traffic policy since 1997. The key ideas behind Vision Zero include the principles that society should not tolerate traffic-related deaths and that transportation networks should be designed to account for the fact that people make mistakes.

Over the course of recent years, driving or walking in Long Beach have become riskier activities.

As of Friday, nine people have died traffic-related deaths in Long Beach, according to the Police Department.

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More than 7,000 crashes occurred on Long Beach streets in 2015, the third consecutive year of increasing traffic collisions.

Traffic fatalities also rose in 2015 — from 15 the year prior to 29.

Pedestrian-involved collisions have also increased over the past three years in Long Beach. The 356 such incidents recorded last year signified an increase of greater than 25 percent when compared to 2011 data.

Baird said one possible method of reducing vehicle-on-pedestrian collisions could be to adopt what’s known as the “continental crosswalk.” Instead of simply marking out a path for pedestrians like a normal crosswalk, continental crosswalks employ thick markings painted along the entire length of the crosswalk.

The Federal Highway Administration favors continental crosswalks over the traditional style on the basis that drivers are more likely to see them.

Lowenthal said Long Beach’s pursuit of zero traffic deaths may also involve such safety-minded concepts as double-buffered bike lanes and reducing the speed limits on some streets to 20 miles per hour in order to protect bicyclists and pedestrians.

She said that in Santa Monica, where she works as an administrator for the city’s bus department, the concept is known as “Twenty is Plenty.”

“A motorist can lose two to three minutes, at most,” she said.