Renderings courtesy of the City of Long Beach. Photos by Greg Santucci.
Fenced off for well over a decade, the 3.7-acre expanse of land that sits just west of Park Avenue at 4th Street was once the right-of-way for the Pacific Electric Red Car trolleys that carried thousands of visitors across SoCal from 1901 until their demise in 1953.
After months of work that began in August of last year, the City finally opened the green space as a full-on park in Belmont Heights.
Dubbed the Red Car Greenway, its main feature is not only creating a “passive park” in the words of 3rd District Councilmember Suzie Price, but more importantly acting as a key cog in connecting the city’s bikeways: as the 6th Street bike lane begins construction, connecting Bellflower Blvd. all the way to Burbank Elementary at Junipero via 6th, a deviation from 6th will lead to the Red Car Greenway and Colorado Lagoon. Bicyclists can then connect to Marine Stadium and PCH should they wish.
The 6th Street bike boulevard will also include a bike counter (like that on the beach path), curb extensions, bioswales, and other improvements. The total cost, $1.1M (as opposed to the original $903K costs) will be funded entirely through transportation and capital project grants.
The greenway project features pathway lighting for those wishing to explore the park at night, trail boulders for seating, trash receptacles and doggie bag dispensers, wood grain textured concrete fencing at entries, and secondary decorative concrete pedestrian trails along the length of the greenbelt, connecting to local streets adjacent to the greenbelt.
The Red Car Greenway was estimated to cost $1.05M and includes the contract award amount of $741,663, including contingency, and the cost for design, construction management, labor compliance and project oversight. The total Project cost is supported by $300,000 funding from the Los Angeles County Regional Parks and Open Space District Grant, $450,000 from the State of California Land and Water State Conservation Fund, $81,000 from the Los Angeles County Supervisor’s Office, $150,000 from Measure A (2016) , and $69,354 from Third Council District Fiscal Year (FY) 14 one-time funds. The funding is appropriated in the Capital Projects Fund (CP) in the Public Works Department.
10 Comments
Love it. It’s beautiful. Thanks for sharing our city and its growth by way of your beautiful photography and writing Brian.
I’d be very curious to see those bike count numbers. The bike-exclusive lanes near me seem extremely underutilized for the amount of real estate (potential parking spaces) they take up. More cyclists ride on the sidewalk than the bike lanes anyways, even if they’re on the same street as a bike lane. It’s time to scrap this experiment in extreme optimism and realize that biking isn’t an attractive option to most people for the vast majority of destinations, and the hundreds of parking spaces would be much more valuable to the average citizen.
The 6th Street bike lanes? Those were just put in. It’s a perfect path to Wilson HS and Rodger’s Middle School. It will also take time for folks to learn about this new safe, and convenient cross town option. People will follow the bike infrastructure and as they feel safe, enjoy the fun, healthy, and convenient mode of transport and recreation that bicycling is. Cars can park in driveways or garages, or on the abundant on-street parking available on most street. I also live on another part of 6th street and I would love it I had no parking in front of my house.
No. To everything you just said.
Seriously? How old are you? Such an archaic and narrow outlook on what is considered a win for pedestrians and cyclists.
I was told that the city has no plans to do anything on Bellflower south of 7th to ease the connection from 6th to the bike lanes on bellflower. Cyclists are expected to use two crosswalks to get from Manila to Bellflower or I guess ride as vehicular cyclists from Manilla out. That would be: 6th to Manila to Bellfower and past PCH/Bellflower and then Bellflower/7th and only then will they find bike lanes. As a rule whenever Caltrans is involved it is a going to be a design that in unusable to anything other than a handful of skilled and fearless cyclists. A bike lane design that requires either the use of crosswalks or forces cyclists to ride in a vehicular fashion is a failure of design. It may also encourage unsafe and wrong way cycling. This a feature of the standard Caltrans approved intersection with only 3 crosswalks and no provisions for cyclists on the right side of the street that crosses PCH.
What I think will happen is that many cyclists will use on the crosswalk to get from Manilla across PCH and then continue riding against traffic on Bellflower. I see this every day at intersections where cyclists cannot easily get across the right side of an intersection that has no crosswalk on the right side – they use the crosswalk on the left and get in the bike lanes on the wrong side of the street. You can observe this at just about any intersection with PCH in Huntington Beach – which always have only 3 crosswalks. A cyclist travelling inland would have to get across the intersection in a vehicular fashion (which few are willing to do). Instead they use the crosswalk on the left side and stay on the sidewalk or get in the wrong bike lane and continue on.
Once again LB leaves out a critical intersection from a bicycle facility – just like Alamitos/3rd/Broadway. This sort of half assed approach that leaves it bicycle facilities at critical intersections is pretty sad in 2018.
There is another issue that seems to reflect a lack of familiarity with bicycles and cyclist behavior on the part of designers. A cyclist travelling east on 6th towards CSULB will come across a fence at the entrance to the P.E. atrail that goes a pretty good job of blocking the path. Is this mean to force cyclists to dismount here? If a cyclist does dismount they will probably get back on once they pass the fence and quickly pick up speed going downhill. If I had a cargo bike or tricycle I would be pretty pissed off right now. I don’t think something like a Christiana trike can fit through there.
A system is only as strong as its weakest links. Once again Long Beach is about to open some under-engineered and overhyped infrastructure with fatal flaws at critical junctions. At least the giant scissors will get to see some action.
How did announcing the opening of a park turn into a rant against cyclists? But I agree Frank (spoiler alert I am being sarcastic). But why stop there, the city should put in parking meters and raise revenue from all that underutilized public space. Bicycling as transportation is “extreme optimism”, Just like John Kennedy’s promise to send men to the moon in 10 years. What you want is a free handout in the form of free parking for your private car with the cost born by ALL the other taxpayers, including those that don’t have cars.
Not saying cyclists shouldn’t be allowed to use the roads like everyone else, but they shouldn’t get acres of dedicated yet almost-completely-unused real estate in the most populated areas of town. I live downtown, I walk my dog all over, and every day I have to dodge cyclists on the sidewalk going west on Broadway or east on 3rd (not to mention disobeying every traffic law in the book). On the east coast, bikes have to be on the street to protect pedestrians, which makes a lot of sense to me too. But my point is, if the bike lanes aren’t worth going a block out of your way to use, are they really a valuable piece of infrastructure?
Mary, I’m a free thinking thirty one year old, but I don’t believe age plays a role in intelligence. Karl, I’m not weighing in on whether the spots should require payment via meter or not, I simply think the space should be USED.
Seems like a broad and utterly logical outlook to me, got any thoughtful responses that aren’t derisions or sarcasm?
Excellent use of funds and public space on a beautiful park.
It looks beautiful!