The Brief

What is Lunar New Year?

Saturday, Feb. 10, marks the Lunar New Year, welcoming the Chinese zodiac Year of the Dragon. This celebration is observed by millions worldwide, including China, Vietnam, Korea, and, of course, connected communities in Los Angeles.

Each community celebrates the festival differently, with different food traditions. We’ve pulled together some culinary offerings around L.A. this year.

Chinese New Year

Chinese New Year activities typically start with some thorough house cleaning before the new year itself. Homes are decorated in red for good luck. The foods traditionally eaten for Chinese New Year are symbolic of longevity and prosperity in some way, usually because of the shape or because the names of the dishes are homophones for related words.

Here are some of the foods typically eaten on Chinese New Year:

Whole fish

The word for fish in Mandarin, yú, is a homophone for another word that means “abundance” or “surplus” — hence, eating fish on Chinese New Year is considered lucky and will bring abundance in the new year. The fish is usually served whole and reflects completion from the beginning to the end, but this is not always the case, especially for smaller households.

Bistro Na's in Temple City provides an array of dishes to help you ring in the Lunar New Year in style.

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Bistro Na's

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Some of the fish specials you can find around town this year include:

• Bistro Na’s is offering different Lunar New Year sets that serve 6-10 people, and all of them include at least one fish dish.
• Crustacean Beverly Hills is offering a $188 eight-course (because eight is an auspicious number) dinner extravaganza with crispy dover sole, black truffle turnip cakes, and more. The dining room will be decked out in Lunar New Year decorations and there will be live entertainers throughout the night. 
• Paradise Dynasty is offering some special dishes like Singapore-style black pepper lobster. There will also be a steamed Chilean sea bass and eight treasure sticky rice for dessert, another popular Lunar New Year treat. The special dishes are available now through March 31, 2024. 
• Steep will have a collaboration dinner with Chef Anthony Wang on Feb. 9-10. There will be an eight-course menu featuring steamed rockfish, radish cake with XO sauce, braised pork belly with abalone, and more.

Poon choi

Poon choi from Collette in Pasadena, a traditional Cantonese festival dish featuring layers of different ingredients and is consumed communally.

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Collette

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This traditional Cantonese meal translates to “basin vegetables” and is served in a large basin. It’s not all vegetables, though — the Lunar New Year poon choi usually also contains several luxurious ingredients like abalone, sea cucumber, BBQ and more.

Poon choi has become a popular Lunar New Year dish in Los Angeles over the past couple of years, with many restaurants offering it at this time of year.

Order the dish from Hop Woo BBQ & Seafood Restaurant, Capital Seafood, Ho Kee Cafe, Sea Harbour, and many others. Colette in Pasadena will also offer poon choi by pre-order this year, and there are two sizes available: one that feeds six and a larger one for ten people.

Tray of togetherness

The tray of togetherness is a tray filled with sweets with symbolic meanings that are served to guests. The tray usually has six or eight compartments with various sweets including candied lotus roots, which symbolize abundance, candied coconut, which symbolizes togetherness, and candied lotus seeds for fertility.

Different versions of the tray can be found at Asian grocery stores such as 99 Ranch Market and 168 Market.

Nián gāo

This dense, glutinous rice cake is another traditional symbolic food. The name, nián gāo, sounds similar to words that mean “getting higher every year” and thus symbolizes growth and progress. While there is both a sweet and savory version, the sweet version is more popular, made with glutinous rice flour and sweetened with brown sugar (some versions may also use chestnuts or red beans). In L.A., you can get them at:

• Kee Wah Bakery. In addition to the rice cake, the bakery also has an assortment of gift sets in Chinese New Year packaging.  
• Woon, which is serving Chinese New Year specials from Feb. 7-11, including savory, stir-fried nián gāo. Woon will also turn up the festivities with red envelope roulette with prizes like t-shirts and free noodles. 

Jiaozi

Jiaozi is the crescent-shaped dumplings that you may know as potstickers. Although dumplings in general are commonly found at celebrations, jiaozi is typically eaten during Chinese New Year as an auspicious food, since the shape of the dumplings resemble the gold ingots or sycee used as currency in imperial China.

Dumplings galore including jiaozi, the crescent-shaped dumpling, at Din Tai Fung for Lunar New Year.

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Din Tai Fung

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You can find jiaozi or potstickers at many restaurants around L.A., including:

• Din Tai Fung, which also serves crescent shaped dumplings in addition to their famous xiao long bao. From Feb. 8-12, Din Tai Fung will be giving guests a red envelope containing a certificate for a free soy noodle appetizer (to be used for a future visit). One lucky guest will get a Golden Ticket, allowing access to the restaurant’s VIP reservation service, which pretty much guarantees you can always get a reservation. 

Lo hei or yusheng

Yee Sang from Sam Tan's Kitchen, a Cantonese-style raw fish salad, consisting of strips of raw fish, mixed with shredded vegetables and a variety of sauces and condiments.

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Sam Tan's Kitchen

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Even within Chinese New Year celebrations, there are quite a few regional variations. For example, the Cantonese lo hei — also called yusheng, or “prosperity toss” — is a raw fish salad that is “tossed” on Chinese New Year and symbolizes abundance. Yusheng is popular among the Chinese communities in Singapore and Malaysia.

Here in L.A., you can pre-order it at:

• Malaysianfoodloversla, which sells them via Instagram for pickup in Arcadia. They’re offering three different seafood toppings: fried shrimp, cocktail shrimp or arctic surf clam. 
• Ms. Chi Cafe, in Culver City, will be offering a special six-course Lunar New Year menu that includes a yusheng salad, followed by golden chicken jiaozi symbolizing wealth, longevity noodles with spicy garlic prawns, Chilean sea bass and more. The $69 menu will be served at dinner from Feb. 9-25.
• Home chef Sam Tan’s Kitchen will have lo hei available for pick up from Feb. 3-24.

Seollal

In Korean, Lunar New Year is called seollal and it’s typically celebrated over three days. Some traditions are similar to those of Chinese New Year, where people travel to their family homes, perform an ancestral ritual, and young ones bow to the elders to show respect and receive money in a red (or white) packet.

Tteokguk

The main dish eaten for seollal is tteokguk, a rice cake soup traditionally made with beef bone broth. The dish is believed to grant good luck and it’s said that people don’t gain another year of age until they’ve had their bowl of tteokguk. The white of the rice cakes also symbolize purity and a bright new beginning.

• Find tteokguk at Hangari Kalguksu, Ma Dang Gook Soo, Sun Nong Dan and other places in Koreatown. 
• Baekjeong KBBQ and Ahgassi Gopchang will both be serving a complimentary bowl of tteokguk for all guests during lunch and dinner service on February 10. 
• Instead of tteokguk, Yangban Society will be gungjung tteokbokki, or “royal rice cake”. In this royal court version, the rice cakes will be served with braised oxtail, hobak squash, shiitake and preserved black truffles. The gungjung tteokbokki will be available Feb. 9-11.

Jeon

The savory pancakes, jeon, aren’t necessarily a seollal-specific dish, but they make an appearance at all celebrations in Korea, including seollal. Jeon can be made from various vegetables and sometimes also incorporate meat or seafood.

• HanEuem in Koreatown serves a platter of different varieties of jeon.
• Baroo is serving a special seven-course dinner on Feb. 10 which will include a seafood jeon with shrimp and sea cucumber as well as maesaengi tteokguk (rice cake soup with seaweed oyster broth). Book it here.

Tết Nguyên Đán

The Lunar New Year celebration in Vietnam is called Tết Nguyên Đán, or Tết for short, and it means “feast for the first morning” — so you know this new year celebration is all about the food.

Bánh tét or bánh chưng

A must-have for a Vietnamese Lunar New Year celebration is bánh tét or bánh chưng. They are glutinous rice cakes wrapped in a banana leaf and typically filled with mung beans and marinated pork. While bánh tét is cylindrical in shape and popular in South Vietnam, bánh chưng is square in shape and eaten more in the northern parts of Vietnam.

The dish is time-consuming to make, and that’s part of its importance, as families spend time together and bond while making it. Around Lunar New Year every year, Bánh Chưng Collective holds a bánh chưng making class. This year’s class will be on Feb. 17, 2024 and attendees will get enough ingredients to make four bánh chưng and everyone will enjoy lunch together (the bánh chưng are taken home to be cooked later).

If you want to enjoy it without making it yourself, though, there are quite a few places to get them in the L.A. area, since bánh tét / bánh chưng are actually eaten year-round. You can find them at various Vietnamese bakeries and delis. Around Tết you can also get some at Sau Can Tho or order them from Kien Gang Bakery while supplies last.

Mut tet

Similar to the Chinese New Year tradition of the tray of togetherness, Vietnamese New Year also has a tray of sweets called mut tet that is used to serve guests during Lunar New Year. Some of the components are also the same, like candied coconut or lotus seeds, but you’d also typically find candied tamarind. You can buy these trays at Vietnamese grocery stores around San Gabriel Valley or Little Saigon.

Splurge-worthy meals

All the auspicious foods listed above are important traditions for many, but really, the most important thing is sharing good food with your loved ones. For many it’s also the time of year to splurge on a dinner too expensive for the day-to-day. There are a number of special dinners happening around town that aren’t about the specific food items, but that are worth looking into:

• Michelin-starred Kato will have their third Lunar New Year dinner series on Feb. 7-9, serving a special menu in collaboration with chefs Daisy Ryan (Bell’s) and Matthew Lightner (okta). The menu hasn’t been finalized yet but reservations can be made here. 
• The high end yakiniku restaurant Niku X will offer a special Lunar New Year tasting menu from Feb. 9-11. The menu costs $250 per person and includes wagyu oxtail potstickers, dry aged sashimi, caviar, and of course, plenty of A5 wagyu for the grill. 
• Merois at The Pendry West Hollywood is also offering a special four-course menu on Feb. 10. The menu costs $165 per person and includes Peking duck, king crab bao and more. There will also be live entertainment throughout the night.
  

Celebrations in Los Angeles

Aside from the food specials we mentioned above, there are also a number of larger community celebrations of Lunar New Year around the Los Angeles area. At these celebrations you’ll find dance performances, cultural showcases, and of course — more food.

Golden Dragon Lunar New Year Parade

The Chinese Chamber of Commerce of Los Angeles is hosting the 125th annual Golden Dragon Parade on Saturday, Feb. 17. The parade is one of the oldest cultural celebrations in Los Angeles, and certainly one of the oldest Lunar New Year celebrations in the city as well. There will be dance performances and marching bands. The parade will start at the corner of Hill and Ord streets in Chinatown.

UVSA Tết Festival

The UVSA Tết Festival is the largest Vietnamese Lunar New Year Festival in the country and this year it will be held at the OC Fair & Event Center from Feb. 9-11. It's hosted by the Southern California chapter of UVSA, or Union of Vietnamese Student Associations. During the three-day festival, there will be cultural activities, food vendors, firecracker shows and more. There will also be a replica of a traditional Vietnamese village complete with cultural exhibits and galleries for those who want to learn more about Vietnamese culture.

Lunar New Year at Pacific Asia Museum

The USC Pacific Asia Museum in Pasadena will be throwing a Lunar New Year celebration on Saturday, Feb, 10. There will be a traditional Chinese lion dance performance as well as a Korean dance performance, taiko drumming, calligraphy and more. Those attending the celebration will also get free admission to the museum.

Lunar New Year at South Coast Botanic Garden

South Coast Botanic Garden will be celebrating Lunar New Year every weekend in February. On Saturdays and Sundays there will be two daily live performances of lion dancers, martial arts and more. There will also be various activity stations from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., including lantern making, calligraphy and mahjong.

Chinese New Year Festival at The Huntington

On Feb. 10-11 The Huntington Library, Art Museum and Botanical Gardens will have a Chinese New Year Celebration. Not only will there be lion dancers and martial arts performances among other entertainment, the various dining venues here will have special menus, serving steamed buns, Chinese mushroom and tofu soup, black bean catfish, Peking duck and more. Reservations are required and can be made here.

MAUM Market

Lunar New Year seems like the perfect time to shop AAPI-owned businesses, and MAUM Market which is LA’s original Asian makers’ market will be holding a market on Saturday, Feb. 10 at ROW DTLA. There will be over 100 Asian-American makers showcasing everything from pottery to cute stationery to food. The market will be held from 12-4 p.m. and entry is free (there’s a free 2-hour parking at ROW DTLA).

Artist Hedy Torres asked a 20-something student from Cal State Northridge to sit for a portrait nearly a decade ago. Using charcoal on paper, she drew the dark-haired young man in black and white — but she deliberately kept the portrait unfinished.

The idea was that she would complete the piece if her subject, a DACA recipient named Lino de Jesús Pérez Cuevas, ever attained lawful permanent residency.

And now he has.

DACA, which stands for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, is a program that provides two-year work permits and deportation relief for people who were brought to the U.S. as children. The permits can be renewed, but the program does not grant a pathway to citizenship. 

In late September, Pérez Cuevas — who is now married, a father, a green card holder and an adjunct instructor at his alma mater — sat with Torres once again.

Torres’ project involves interviewing subjects as she sketches them. This year, she invited the public to watch her complete the portrait as she spoke to Pérez Cuevas about what it took for him to get a green card and what that means for his life.

About two dozen people gathered at a community center in West Hollywood’s Plummer Park to see her add details to the piece that speak to the passing of time.

“I just wanted to make people empathetic to what [immigrants] go through during this process,” she said. “You have to be very patient. There is a lot of uncertainty.”

Responding to the potential loss of relief

Pérez Cuevas, who was born in the Mexican state of Oaxaca, was brought to the U.S. by his parents when he was 2.

When Torres drew him in 2017, he was pursuing a master’s degree in kinesiology at Cal State Northridge. That year, then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced intentions to rescind DACA, which had enabled him to set goals without the fear of being deported. A 2020 Supreme Court decision allowed the program to continue.

Torres was once undocumented herself, so she understood the 2017 announcement was earth-shattering for the approximately 800,000 people who were then in the program, she said.

The original, unfinished portrait of Lino de Jesús Pérez Cuevas.

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That year, Torres was also a student at CSUN, working toward a master’s in fine art.

She recalled recently that she wanted people to see DACA recipients as people, not numbers. And so, for her master's project, she proposed creating portraits of DACA beneficiaries.

The portraits would be rooted in interviews conducted as she drew her subjects. Leaving them unfinished, she said, would symbolize the precarity of the moment.

The pieces would have enough detail for viewers to see the subjects’ faces clearly, particularly their eyes and expressions. Other elements, including their bodies and clothing, would be more of an initial sketch.

The university greenlit her project and gave her a grant to pursue it. There was just one problem: Torres had to convince reticent DACA recipients to share their stories.

Building trust 

When Torres first messaged Pérez Cuevas about the project, he ignored her for two weeks, he said. But because they had a mutual friend, he eventually agreed to meet with her.

“I was trying to see whether this person was just an academic trying to complete a project for her own benefit, or whether she really cared about the community,” he told LAist.

They met at a coffee shop. Pérez Cuevas learned about the artist’s journey from the Mexican state of Colima and everything she’d lived through since.

Before 2015, for example, an undocumented person in California could not get a driver’s license. When she was undocumented, Torres was stopped by police and had her car impounded. She said he had to cobble together thousands of dollars to get her car back from a tow yard.

Pérez Cuevas could relate. He had experienced the same thing.

He decided to trust her.

After she drew him, Pérez Cuevas helped Torres connect with more DACA recipients at the university. She drew four other portraits, which were also left unfinished.

These works were acquired by the university, with the agreement that Torres would be able to borrow and complete them when — and if — her subjects attained lawful permanent residency.

Community members watch Artist Hedy Torres update the portrait at Plummer Park in West Hollywood.

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‘A sense of freedom’  

As she worked on the portrait, Torres added soft lines rendered in charcoal to the image of Pérez Cuevas’ face, along with a robust mustache. And she continued the interview.

“What did you imagine your life would be like when you were young?” Torres asked.

Thinking back to high school, Pérez Cuevas said he realized then that not having a social security number barred him from decent-paying work.

“I didn't really understand what I was doing with my life,” he said, adding that he used to not think higher education was for him even while he was at CSUN. “My state of mind was really dark back then.”

He credited a college counselor with helping him navigate school.

Pérez Cuevas said he has intimate knowledge of what it’s like to live with constant uncertainty: not knowing how he would pay for college because he did not qualify for federal financial aid; not being able to travel outside the country; and waiting anxiously for federal officials to make decisions on immigration laws that could transform his life.

“I can't stress enough how difficult it is psychologically to wait because it's something that can revolutionize your life,” he said. “You're betting your whole life on this approval and just that suspense of waiting, waiting, waiting, living with that anxiety.”

Torres completed her portrait of Pérez Cuevas in September 2026. Four other portraits remain unfinished.

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U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services continues to process renewal requests for existing DACA recipients, but the agency is no longer approving first-time applications.

Under the second Trump administration, DACA recipients are also experiencing significant delays with renewals. Some have lost their jobs. Recipients have been deported. According to the agency, the median processing time for DACA renewals was one month in 2023. Currently, it’s taking seven months to process most cases.

Pérez Cuevas said he was able to adjust his immigration status after marrying a U.S. citizen and consulting with an attorney. His lawyer helped him secure a document that allowed noncitizens to travel abroad and seek legal re-entry.

“Did getting permanent residency give you a sense of freedom, a freedom you probably didn't have when you were under DACA?” Torres asked him.

“Absolutely,” Pérez Cuevas said. “The biggest freedom was psychological freedom. You have this weight that you've been carrying all these years that finally just gets thrown off your shoulders.”

One of the things he feared most was long-term separation from his parents, he said.

When his mother and father migrated to the U.S., they did not see their own parents — his grandparents — for 40 years, Pérez Cuevas added. After his parents moved back to Mexico during the pandemic, he feared they would also go decades without seeing each other.

But having a green card enables him to travel and see his family.

Pérez Cuevas told Torres that, paradoxically, the threat of losing DACA made him “weirdly ambitious."

He said he doubled down on his studies and took on every internship he could. He figured that if the U.S. decided to deport him, he’d still have his education and work experience.

“Even on the days where I didn't necessarily have the greatest energy or the greatest state of mind, I showed up for myself,” Pérez Cuevas said.

Southern California is expected to see the longest heat wave of the season.

The National Weather Service has issued an extreme heat warning for the greater Los Angeles area from Friday through at least next Thursday, and forecasters say it’ll likely extend beyond that.

Temperatures are expected to be in the mid-90s to mid-100s, even in coastal areas.

“Unfortunately, we don't really see an end to it as far as we can tell, and that's probably the biggest thing we wanna highlight, is that while we have had hotter events this season already, this one might be the longest-lasting,” said Ryan Kittell, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service.

Kittell said they expect to see a few daily records to be broken.

Southern California saw a record-breaking 10-day heat wave in the summer of 2022.

What does the hot weather mean for fire risk? 

Forecasters say conditions likely won’t meet the threshold for issuing red flag warnings (extremely dry air and windy conditions), but the risk of fire is still going to be high during the heat wave.

“It’s still concerning, and if a fire were to get started in the wrong area, it could grow pretty fast,” Kittell said. “ We do have a history of large fires in similar environments with similar heat, similar time of the year.”

As of Thursday afternoon, Southern California Edison said nearly 10,000 customers in parts of Riverside County were under consideration for power shutoffs, which are used to reduce the risk of electrical equipment starting a fire.

How do we manage through the heat? 

Kittell said people should make plans to stay cool during the long heat wave, and check in on neighbors who are elderly, or on families with young children.

Officials say residents should limit outdoor activities to the early morning hours, stay in air-conditioned places in the afternoon and evening hours, and stay hydrated.

When Naoko Takei Moore, the author of Simply Donabe, was growing up in Tokyo, some of her earliest memories were of the family donabe.

Donabe, which means “clay pot” in Japanese, is an earthenware cooking vessel that has been part of Japanese home cooking for centuries.

On weekends, her mother would set the donabe on a tabletop burner at the center of the table, with the broth already made and the ingredients prepped. She would let Moore, then about 4, add them to the pot.

"It made me feel like I was cooking it," Moore said. "I was a hero."

Her late mother had one piece of advice about the pot: “Just let the donabe do the work for you."

That’s what Moore wants to do at our latest Cookbook Live at the Crawford in Pasadena on Thursday Oct. 8, in partnership with the James Beard Foundation.

What a donabe can do 

"Just let the donabe do the work for you," Moore's late mother used to say.

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Because the clay is porous, a donabe heats slowly and retains heat long after the flame is off, allowing savory, umami-rich flavors to build without heavy seasoning. It handles almost anything: hot pots, rice, braises, soups, stews and steamed dishes.

"If you have good ingredients, you really don't need to cover up the flavors with so many different things," Moore said.

In Japan, it's often served as a communal pot meal, set at the center of the table so everyone can cook and eat together.

Donabe in L.A.

When Moore moved to L.A. in 2001, she found that her friends loved sushi and ramen, but thought Japanese home cooking was too complicated. The donabe dinners she hosted changed their minds.

On a trip home to Tokyo, she tasted rice cooked in a donabe made by Nagatani-en, an eighth-generation kiln in Iga founded in 1832.

"Oh my gosh, what is this about this particular donabe?" she remembered thinking. She contacted the kiln and began importing its pots.

Moore's West Hollywood shop, TOIRO, carries an array of artisan donabe that she selects herself.

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Moore launched TOIRO in 2008 as an online import business, shipping orders from her basement and teaching donabe classes in her home kitchen. She opened the West Hollywood shop in 2017.

"First I had to start by telling people how to pronounce it," she said. (It's doh-nah-bay.)

Now, she said, major publications print "donabe" without translating it, and in 2015 she co-wrote her first book on the subject. Simply Donabe is her second.

What's cooking Oct. 8

Naoko Takei Moore's new cookbook, Simply Donabe: Japanese One-Pot Recipes.

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For Moore, the upcoming cooler weather means hot pot season.

"The season is changing, and it's getting cooler, which I love," she said. "I love making all different kinds of hot pot dishes."

Onstage, she'll make a chicken-and-lemon hot pot from the new book, with sweet saikyo miso, kabocha squash, enoki mushrooms, spinach and thinly sliced lemon.

"I hope you'll be surprised how simple it is," she said. "And I hope you get to smell it."

As the city of Los Angeles continues to struggle to reduce traffic deaths, local officials are planning to use new cameras to detect speeding drivers.

In a Thursday news conference, city leaders said that by the end of the year, cameras at 125 locations throughout the city will all be online. The first cameras will be operational by the end of October.

“Speed is the primary difference between a crash that injures and a crash that kills,” said L.A. Department of Transportation General Manager Laura Rubio-Cornejo at the news conference, held near an elementary school in East Hollywood where crews have installed a camera.

In the last decade, between 250 and 350 people in the city have died every year from traffic collisions. LAPD data from the end of September show that traffic deaths are up 14% compared with last year.

A program launched under former Mayor Eric Garcetti, known as Vision Zero, aimed to reduce traffic fatalities to zero by 2025. Instead, last year, 290 people died in traffic fatalities, exceeding homicides for the third year in a row.

“The implementation of speed safety systems in the city of Los Angeles is as groundbreaking and potentially lifesaving as the implementation of seat belts,” said Damian Kevitt, the head of the nonprofit Streets are for Everyone, which has long advocated for the cameras.

Where are the cameras and how will they work?

Each of the 125 locations will have two cameras monitoring cars traveling in both directions.

You can see an interactive map of camera locations here. LAist reported on the city’s methodology for choosing locations earlier this year.

If a driver is going at least 11 mph above the posted speed limit, a camera will capture a photo of the rear of the vehicle, including the rear license plate.

“This information is and will remain the sole property of the Los Angeles Department of Transportation,” Rubio-Cornejo said. “It cannot be shared with any law enforcement agencies without a court-issued subpoena.”

After the cameras at each of the locations are installed, there will be a 60-day period during which speeding drivers will receive a warning.

Citations and fines, which range from $50 to $500 depending on the severity of the speeding, will follow the warning period.

All warnings, citations and fines will be mailed to the registered owner of the offending vehicle.

Revenue generated from the cameras is required by state legislation to be invested in the city’s efforts to make streets safer.

Evidence from other cities show cameras deter speeding

L.A. is one of several cities permitted to pilot the speed cameras by state legislation authored by then-Assemblymember Laura Friedman.

“We have people who walk around our community every single day, who more and more are the victims of traffic violence from drivers who are driving recklessly and with a wanton disregard for the safety of other people,” said Friedman, who is now a Democratic U.S. Representative for California’s 30th Congressional District.

San Francisco deployed its cameras in May 2025. A year into the program, the city’s transportation agency said it had observed an 80% drop in speeding cars at camera locations. Two-thirds of drivers who were warned about or cited for speeding did not get another ticket, according to the agency.

The data is similar in Oakland, which launched its cameras in January. The Oakland Department of Transportation said that within six months, the number of cars speeding dropped by an average of 70% across the locations compared to baseline data it collected before the cameras were installed.

Other L.A. County cities, including Malibu, Glendale and Long Beach, are also participating in the program.