Recommendation to request City Manager to work with the Long Beach Transit Agency to explore partnerships, costs, feasibility, and options to update and modernize ad-bearing bus shelters and return to City Council with recommendations within 90 days.
Thank you. Item 17 Communication from Councilmember Richardson, Councilwoman Gonzalez, Councilwoman Mongo and Council Member Oranga recommendation to request the city manager to work with the Long Beach Transit Agency to explore partnerships, costs, feasibility and options to update and modernize at varying bus shelters and return to City Council with recommendations within 90 days. Councilmember Richardson. This, again, is a straight forward request. You know, we we when we travel to other cities, we like to take take a look at what they're doing this this innovative or interesting or what we can learn. And and, you know, I was just sort of blown away by the ad shelters in Washington, D.C. at the last Fed ledge trip. So we did a little bit of research and had some conversations, initial conversations with Long Beach Transit about what can we do to take another look at our our bus shelter, our ad shelters and their condition? The public's expressed the need to improve these shelters. I know that we do it. There are you know, we have contracts with CBS and or upfront to advertise and all that. But what we want to do right now is perhaps explore, maybe have a joint committee with Long Beach, Long Beach Transit to explore opportunities to maybe integrate some technology or better signage or something that really improves this program that we have. We just tonight discussed, you know, removal of blighted billboards, and that was a focus. And we were able to partner with the industry to achieve that goal. And this is something that I'd like to explore here tonight, to partner with the industry, to explore the goal of improving these ad shelters to perhaps, you know, their ideas of having wi fi stations at ad shelters. There are ideas of perhaps doing digital digital displays at shelters. And so those are some of the things that I want. I want the city to go ahead, partner with Long Beach Transit to explore. Thank you, Councilman Mongo. I think this is a great program and I look forward to hearing what they come back with. And Mr. City managers and staff report on this. No, we'd be happy to comply with the request, though. Q Councilman Gonzales. I just want to thank Councilmember Richardson for bringing this forward, because we've talked about this numerous occasions and how they need to be maintained, just a basic level. But then we can go a bit further and make it a little bit more creative. But, you know, some of them there's one on Anaheim in Long Beach Boulevard that, you know, is just in in I think it's the most utilized in all the city are pretty well utilized. And it'd be nice to have an extra element of shade. I mean, I know we have some easement issues with the property owner, but some shade or I've even seen like where you've had bookcases. I mean, we can get really creative here and I think it's an opportunity to do that. So thank you. Councilman Price. So, yes, on that note, I wanted to also include the possibility of having art or local art at these shelters, because we often get requests from people to do that. So the scope can be broader than just advertisements that be great. Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate that. And Councilmember Richardson, thank you for bringing this forward. I wanted to just add a word of caution to staff. I think staff is aware of this. I don't see I see our public works director here as well. So the city of Los Angeles expanded its bus stop improvement program with bus shelters and contracted with CBS Taco, which I think is a fine company. And recently it was stated in the paper that many of those agreements fell apart because the city fell short in approving the permits and doing things in a timely manner. But in addition to that, I also want us to know that we may have priorities as a council and a city to have amenities at certain bus stops that we believe are high volume, perhaps depressed, economically depressed areas, but they don't necessarily align with advertiser's goals. So that might not be the best location for advertisers. And so there is a inherent there can be an inherent conflict between advertiser goals, bus shelter, company goals, city goals, councilmember goals. And so I'd like to hear. How you hope to balance out or ensure that where we think. The bus stops near the greatest treatment, as well as limited transit based on volume of activity. How how would you try to ensure that that is what CVS would do? Well, a lot of what you're talking about would not be CVS. It would be actually Long Beach Transit. So how they could work to enhance their build their areas in other areas of the city, whether they, you know, back in the day, they did a lot of art, as you're aware of. They haven't done some art for a while. So we could talk to Mr. McDonald about that and then also get his ideas about about what we're doing with our ad programs as well. Right. So when we look at partnerships as transit agencies, oftentimes we give the opportunity to advertise to companies so that they pay for the infrastructure. So unless you're telling us that Long Beach transit is going to pay for the infrastructure. That this transit does, the infrastructure for the non ad bearing busses. For the non end. And then we help through the advertising company make sure that the ad bearing bus shelters are clean and safe and all that. So those are the things that we're going to pay a lot of attention to, given what Councilman Richardson said, and we'll sit down with them, Mr. McDonald, next week to see where this takes us. And that's great. My word of caution from my own professional work is the ones that are ad bearing. We have to be forthright and be sure that there is an equity because what will happen is you'll have bus treatments that are better in places that have greater impressions for advertising. And we want to make sure that locations such as the one that the councilman mentioned are addressed. And I know lobbies transit well. We are very different from other cities. I know this. Thank you. Councilman Richardson. I think you're right. There is a balance. But we have at varying shelters today, and it looked terrible. And frankly, wherever they are, we need to do something better. Even if it's a static it even if it's what they have today, the standard has to improve. We just have to I mean, this conversation needs to happen fairly, but, you know, it's going to take some time, I imagine. So I think we start on it sooner than later. So when this contract comes up again, we have a plan or maybe we even in that contract early and have a strategy. But but I tend to agree with your words of caution. I think this will be complex, but we should try it. Thank you. Thank you. And is there any member of the public that wish to address Council on item 17? See Nunn members cast your vote. Oh, I'm sorry. Something. I apologize. Yes, that's okay. We're just talking here about add bearing. Is that correct? That's it. So would it be possible to add a friendly amendment for all bus shelters. That we were going to talk about all bus shelters with Mr. McDonnell, because specifically the one that you had mentioned is not an ad barring location of. It's certainly very, very busy. We talked a lot with transit before to enhance that station. They probably need to do some type of a eminent domain, take on the business to provide more seating or shelter and things. We've had lots of conversation there at that because that's a key bus station there. So we will talk to lobby students about all of our bus our bus shelters on this. But again, primarily, we'll look at the ad bearing ones as well. Okay, great. And I will say, you know, working with transit, it was great forth. And we were able to work with the Arts Council years ago to get a really nice art piece there. So there's other opportunities available. So thank you. And there are examples of that in the East Village, too, at the bus stop there. So they do do great work. Thank you for that clarification. Members, cast your vote. Motion carries. Item 18.