Coming to Long Beach: less parking
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The City of Long Beach is actively making plans to increase population density throughout the city. Those plans do not plan to accommodate the increased need for parking. The City could begin considering the kinds of solutions that are working in other cities or they can continue to make parking worse.
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Most of the people that we hear from appreciate the development. They are only looking for protection from the impacts of spillover parking into our adjacent residential neighborhoods. Even people who have a parking space cannot have visitors because of the parking issues. Business owners ask us how they can help fix this because it’s hurting them, too.
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Parking is a quality of life issue but also an economic necessity for many people. 77% of Long Beach travels outside of town for their jobs. Everyone is suddenly expected to lose time and money to accommodate a plan that was not based on data.
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The first building under the Downtown Plan has filled an extra parking lot with cars that should be able to park inside the building. That parking lot will soon be closed when more condos are built. Many other buildings have already been approved without adequate parking. (See details by clicking on the parking problem/city plans tab.) There isn’t enough alternative parking in the area for these extra cars.
There are already several highrises approved or being planned for downtown (see map), all with these low parking requirements. Nearly all of these new buildings also take away existing active parking lots. In addition, the City has also increased the number of metered or 2 hour zones for businesses and will continue to do so.
See a map here that shows this elimination of residential parking in just one area of Downtown. Residences still use that parking even with all the frustration. At this point everyone is fighting over the same parking.
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Here's a link to our folder that contains our large collection of impacted parking stories, our petition, letters, and suggestions for solutions that came from residents. There are better solutions for both businesses and residences. Many could pay for themselves.
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Long Beach has made some admirable improvements. Those things will give us a good head start on a well-rounded plan but by themselves, they are not enough for our city to thrive or to compete with surrounding cities.
Long story short... after years of many people asking the city to at least stop making it worse, we have a ray of hope. The City of Long Beach has agreed to do a parking study. Professional recommendations from that study could lead to a change in direction for our entire city. Or they could choose to ignore those recommendations. Or they could continue to refuse to take action soon enough for the solutions to be effective. Stay tuned because you may be able to help by speaking up at key times! Updates on our efforts can be found under the Updates tab at the top of this page.
Free bumper stickers (removable) are available at community or city meetings as shown in updates.
2020 Voters and City Council candidates:
You can see a summary of the solutions proposed by parking planners and the city's refusal to act if you go here.