Recommendation to request City of Long Beach to adopt the goal of Vision Zero to eliminate traffic fatalities and serious injuries among all road users, including those walking, bicycling and driving by 2026 through the following recommendations: • Request analysis of corridors and intersections with high bicycle, pedestrian, and vehicle injury crash rates to understand traffic safety issues and to help prioritize resources based on geographic areas and issues of the greatest need within 180 days. • Request City Manager form a Vision Zero Task Force made up of relevant City departments (LBPD, Public Works, Health and Human Services, Development Services), Long Beach Transit, Long Beach Unified School District and community members with mobility or urban planning expertise to develop an action plan with clear strategies, "owners" of each strategy, interim targets, timelines, and measurable goals. • Request an (biannual or annual) update be made available to the City Council and community members on the progre
Item 35 is a communication from Vice Mayor Lowenthal. Councilwoman Gonzalez. Councilman Andrews. Councilmember Richardson. Recommendation to adopt the goal of Vision zero to eliminate traffic fatalities and serious injury among all road users by 2016. Will you move for me? Okay. There's been a motion and a second set of staff report. We have no staff report at this time, but we're happy to respond to any questions the Council has in implementing this. Give me 1/2. You want to find them? Can you log me out of that one? Is that the problem? Do you think? All right, let me try this again. Okay. There we go. So I just wanted to thank the staff for hosting Vision Zero some time back when they the team was here to present and share with us the different data from the different various cities throughout the country as well as throughout the world about the dangers of collisions between vehicles and moving objects and pedestrians. So this request is an analysis of our corridors and intersections with high bicycle, pedestrian vehicle injury, crash rates to understand traffic safety issues and to really help prioritize our resources based on geographic areas and issues of the greatest need. And to have this back within 180 days. Many cities have signed on to this. This is something that I think it's a great night to actually consider this and have the staff take a look at this and bring this back to council. On a night when we have adopted our Midtown specific plan, on a night that we have adopted our pedestrian action plan and things that are related to planning and certainly things that are related to making the public space as safe as possible and as engaging as possible for our residents. So I would like to thank my fellow colleagues for signing onto this item with me. Something that I know many of you may have been hearing in public discourse is the question of our use of the word accident. We referred to the term accident when it comes to collisions between vehicles, collisions between a vehicle and pedestrian, and the simplicity of that term. Is helpful for many reasons, but I think we are nationally at least having a dialog about whether it's the right term to use. And so one of the things that we hope to look at as this analysis comes back is to reframe those instances as truly just collisions and not to assign blame, but to really assign the severity of it, especially to pedestrians and those on bike, those on really on on smaller mobility devices. And so the severity of it needs to be acknowledged and understood, I think, as we redesign our city to be safer for everyone that navigates it. So I do wish to thank my colleagues for signing on to the item. As I mentioned previously, we hosted Vision Zero here. This was September of last year. We had Leah Sham, founder and director of Vision Zero Network, come to Long Beach to introduce this project to me in my office. This network will help the city and community leaders develop and share best practices towards safe mobility for all road users . Vision Zero is a road safety policy that builds safety and livability into our streets, encouraging cities to commit to building better and safer streets. Educate the public on safety, traffic safety, enforce traffic laws, and adopt policy changes that saves lives. The goal is to create a culture that prioritizes traffic safety and to ensure that mistakes on our roadways don't result in serious injuries or death. The result of this collaborative citywide the citywide effort will be safer, more livable streets as we work to eliminate traffic fatalities. And as many of you may know, we had a traffic fatality today or earlier this morning, late last night. And it's very unfortunate. Vision zero goals and strategies have been honed by elected elected officials, professionals and activists in Europe and are currently being embraced in progressive cities around the country. Cities like Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Washington, D.C., Santa monica are currently undertaking major safety street safety initiatives inspired by the original Vision Zero effort in our quest to be a bikeable, walkable city. My goal is to have Long Beach among these cities. Given the interest and capability in our various departments, I know that we have the wherewithal to achieve this goal. We're already doing it. And with our commitment to the Bicycle Master Plan, the development of transit oriented development, pedestrian master plan, our mobility element and downtown, the goal of Vision Zero is a natural evolution for our city. It's the right time and it's the next step. Over the last 12 months, we've had 308 cyclist involved collisions districts one to and six having the highest number and initiative and eventual policy of Vision zero will help make that number much lower with the hopes of getting it to zero in ten years. If this item passes, which I encourage my colleagues to consider voting in favor of, I would like to encourage the city manager and the City Council to identify funds and applicable grants to make a long term strategic plan a priority as we go into the fiscal year 17 budget. And at this time, I'd like to turn it over to my co co-sponsor, Councilman Gonzalez. Yes. Thank you. Vice Mayor, I want to just extend my appreciation to you for this item, because it's very yes, it's very timely. But I think as we are moving towards a very mobile city with the addition of many bike lanes, the addition of many different elements to ensure that people are walking and biking and doing things other than driving, it's important that we're also adding a safety component. I really especially like the fact that we're requesting the city manager to form or to look about the feasibility of forming a Vision Zero task force to include the Long Beach Unified School District. Because many kids I hear of the stories that they're crossing basically Anaheim from the West Side to get to downtown. And a lot of them, you know, have that that's the their only mode of transportation. I think it's really important that we look at that as well and and see what types of goals we can work on to ensure that these kids are safe. Most definitely. And I appreciate it. So I look forward to hearing back a report on this information and seeing where we can go from there. But this is wonderful. Thank you. Thank you, Councilmember Richardson. Thank you, Vice Mayor. And I'm glad that you asked me to sign on to this, I think is a great idea. I also would say that this is timely for a number of reasons. I know that the school district is, you know, getting out of school. And there have been a lot of conversations about safe routes and updating the safe route maps in particular. And in my council district. You know, a lot of discussion right now given that, you know, school bus, the last school the school busses has taken away. It's school busses. And it's a new focus on how do you walk across bridges, how do you walk through a neighborhood? And we're finding that routes that we took for granted are not are not safe for for young people. And we're working on this. But I think it's important that this plan and I think it's good that this plan is based on data and helps us to identify funding strategies based on data. One fact is that, you know, Atlantic and Atlantic Avenue on Artesia Boulevard was tied in 2015 for the most traffic accidents in our city . And that's right at the intersection of that's right by Jordan High School. That's literally the intersection of Jordan High School. So it says a lot that the city council is making a commitment to developing a plan to try to eliminate traffic fatalities. I would also say that it's timely and I think we need to take a look at the other plans that are that are happening in the city to make sure that all our interests intersect. For example, we just announced funding for Heal Zone, which is $1 million of funding in three specific census tracts. Well, this intersection is in that census tracts. There's a lot of organizing with youth around that. So with this task force, I want to make sure that there are links between place based initiatives and this citywide document. And then the last thing I would say is I would I think that involving the school district is important, but I want to make sure that that means youth as well and not just staff. I want to make sure that you have a role in this in this process. Again, this is this seems really important, really serious. And it has my full support. Thank you, Councilwoman Mongo. We have been talking about traffic and traffic safety for quite a long time. And I think that this item is is very important and it's a great time for this to come forward. We had recently had the adjustment in the crossing guards, which was an impact to some of our communities. I know that even today we received an email about the changes that have been experienced over the last several months since the crossing guard change came. So I'm glad that there'll be a citizen committee involved in this. I think data driven decisions is the way to go. I know that last night the chief. Communicated to our neighbors that one of our neighborhood groups about the increase in traffic collisions across the city and the state recently. And so now is the time that we get ahead of this. And so I'm really excited to have this come back to council. Thank you. Councilwoman Price. Thank you. I, too, want to thank staff for their work on this, and I want to thank our traffic engineering department. They've just been phenomenal to work with. I think this item is great. I want to thank my colleagues who brought this item forward. This is an issue that's near and dear to my heart as I've been a vehicular homicide prosecutor for years dealing for in traffic fatalities for for many years exclusively. And I attend a lot of nits conferences and OTS events that that are focused on traffic safety. So I think this is great. And it's it's one of those things where it's kind of like impaired driving. There's actually a methodology to prevent traffic fatalities. It really is one of those tragedies that can be avoided if people take better care and we do a better job of designing around our mobility point. So I want to I want to thank my colleagues who brought this item forward. I think this is going to be a great discussion for us to have as a city. So thank you. Thank you. Is there any member of the public that wishes to address the Council on item 35? Please come forward. State your name. Good evening. Thank you, Vice Mayor, for bringing this forward and to your co-sponsors. A lot of great things were said about Vision Zero. I just wanted to add a couple of quick things. My name is Steve Gardam with Long Beach. Lisa Humm will be back in Long Beach in a couple of weeks. She will be attending the Heads Count conference, which is the state convening of pedestrian advocates. And so we're excited to have her back and be able to tell her, assuming this goes through, that we are now a Vision Zero city. I think when we look back on this moment a few years from now, we will compare it to the day when Mr. Penaloza came to town and told us we could be bold and become a leader in being bicycle friendly. We took his advice. We took that leap and look how far we've come and keeping the torch. And you brought up the point about calling things traffic accidents. When we have an intersection like Atlantic and Artesia where accidents happen over and over again. MLK in Seventh Street. Over and over again. They're not accidents. They're predictable. And we can fix them. So with that black lung, which strongly supports and urges you to create the task force and initiate a Vision Zero process. Thank you very much. Thank you, Steve. And thank you for all your assistance. Dennis. Dennis, turn. Let's try to make this a car friendly city. The present situation is intolerable with bikes going in the middle of the road and cars veering off the track, trying not to hit them. Testimony is the effect that the by situation. Is out of hand. I spoke to three police officers about this in Belmont. Sure. They said that the rain and the confusion. Would cause. Fatalities and that it was not a good situation to have bikes so freely use the roads. It just stands to reason. You know, if a bike is a middle. Of the road, you might hit them. You have to be totally aware of the situation. And awareness means no bikes in. The middle of the road, no bikes in busy streets. The routing of the bikes had been in busy streets, the most busy city. Excuse me, Miss Price. Misrata. The city. Busy streets. The busy streets have been a real problem. They should be. If there is to be bike allowance, then it should be done and not busy streets. What I propose is an alternate proposal to the Council. It's more democratic than having the council decide themselves. Let's leave it up to the. People whether. Or not they want a bike friendly city. Or a car friendly city. There are more cars. On the road the than our bikes. More pedestrians can be hit on a bike in the middle of the road. Let's investigate. Surely the present proposal is a good one. It's on the right track. But let's get it direct. Let's get down to the real facts. And the bikes. Pose a traffic problem. Thank you, Mr. Dunn. Anyone else. Okay. There's been a motion and a second and I will just throw out to staff as something that's being contemplated in the city of Santa monica is 20 is plenty. So four roads that are known for being thoroughfares, we're encouraging 20 miles per hour. Isn't that catchy? 20 is plenty. Thank you, members. Cast your vote. Councilwoman Mango. Motion carries. All right, Madam Clerk, I believe we are at public comment. Is that correct? Okay. I have nine speakers that have indicated interest in speaking on items, not on the agenda. Franklin Sims. If you're here. Here we go. Thank you.