The Brief

Long Beach resident Kelsey Wise has been asking for a speed bump on her street for months. After multiple close calls on Orange Avenue just north of Seventh Street, she spent hours building a PowerPoint to lobby her City Council member to get behind the idea. Her efforts earned her a meeting with the Long Beach Public Works Department, which manages street safety improvements. Soon, she’ll make her case to them as well.

Few people go to the lengths Wise did, but she’s far from the only person with frustrations about how difficult it is to make local streets safer.

With fatal traffic collisions at their highest point in more than a decade, that dissatisfaction bubbled over last week at a Long Beach City Council meeting, where members and residents took turns voicing their irritation.

Council members told city staff to come up with a plan to speed up safety measures, but it raised the question for us: What’s taking so long to begin with?

We put those questions to City Traffic Engineer Paul Van Dyk. Here’s what we found out.

What happens when residents ask for a new safety measure?

When the city receives a request to evaluate a street for a potential measure to influence traffic behavior, Long Beach sends out city staff to observe drivers along that section of roadway.

In general, a street must clear three specific benchmarks for the city to begin designing a measure to impact traffic behavior. More than 26% of drivers must be observed speeding on a certain stretch of roadway, that stretch must have at least one crash per year and the street must average more than 2,000 vehicles per day.

There are outliers to these rules. For example, Sixth Street between Almond and Orange avenues averages 790 cars per day on less than a tenth of a mile. Fewer than 2% of drivers speed on that stretch, but it’s seen a half dozen collisions recently. City traffic engineers are lowering the speed limit on that stretch from 25 mph to 15 mph to limit future crashes.

Asking for a change is no guarantee that something will happen quickly.

Public Works is dealing with a backlog of requests. It received 220 over the past two years and still has 40 it needs to evaluate, and new requests are rolling in, with this year already outpacing prior ones.

And of the 180 requests Public Works finished evaluating, only 17 were selected for new traffic-calming measures. Once a road is selected for a traffic-calming measure, it takes anywhere from two to four months to install, according to a Jan. 20 presentation from Public Works.

Residents can submit a request for a traffic evaluation here.

The state has strict rules on where and when a stop sign can be installed. To meet the threshold, an intersection must have five or more reported crashes in 12 months. Furthermore, it has to be clear that a stop sign would directly prevent similar crashes from occurring, and there must be a minimum vehicle and pedestrian volume through the area.

Stop Signs

Stop signs are effective when “there’s an equilibrium” in traffic flow, said Van Dyk. If someone pulls up to a four-way stop sign and there’s never anybody at any of the three other directions, it makes the driver less likely to obey the sign, he said.

“The hard part is not putting up a sign,” Van Dyk said. “It’s convincing people to actually listen to the sign. To follow what the sign says and make it make sense to them.”

Speed Bumps

Speed bumps are different than speed humps. Speed humps can include speed tables and raised crosswalks, while speed bumps are concrete mounds that require drivers to slow down to cross.

“Typically, speed bumps are most effective if we’re seeing significant amounts of people going at high speed,” Van Dyk said.

If people typically travel between 25 and 30 mph down a street, speed bumps “really aren’t going to make a noticeable difference in behavior,” he said.

They are reserved for areas where people typically travel at 35 to 40 mph, Van Dyk said. However, even if a traffic engineer deems it a viable solution to slow speeding traffic, Long Beach requires a petition signed by neighbors to install them. The approval percentage ranges from 50-75%, depending on the type of speed hump or bump the neighborhood is seeking.

New left-turn signals

From January 2023 through the end of 2025, Public Works received 133 resident requests to check the timing of existing traffic signals. When that happens, Public Works sends out a traffic engineer to “test all the different detectors around the light to make sure that they are accurately detecting when a car goes by.”

They check to make sure the magnetic sensors underground are working properly and observe traffic during rush hour to make sure the light is “flushing the left turn pocket every time,” Van Dyk said.

Van Dyk acknowledged the danger of trying to make a left turn at a green light instead of a green arrow. “All of the liability is on the driver in making sure that I’m doing this safely,” he said.

Vehicles make their way along Long Beach Boulevard as they pass a speed limit sign at Seventh Street in Long Beach on Thursday, December 1, 2022. Photo by Thomas R. Cordova. Long Beach is in the process of adding more left-turn arrow lights, but “traffic signals are probably one of the most expensive projects that the city undertakes” as far as traffic-calming measures, Van Dyk said.

Adding a signal at one intersection costs “more than half a million” dollars once you factor in the costs of building the light and making sure everything is hooked up properly underground without disturbing the existing utility lines, Van Dyk said.

“It’s a lot of steel, it’s a lot of engineering,” he said.

Low-cost fixes include changing the signal timing “to give pedestrians a head start” when crossing the street.

Crosswalks

Long Beach plans to install 39 new crosswalks throughout the city, including 25 with a button that activates rectangular rapid flashing beacons for pedestrians crossing the road.

Among those to be installed: two will go along Seventh Street, five will be installed on Anaheim Street and three will be installed on Atlantic Avenue.

Those with specialty beacons are placed on marked crosswalks that see elevated levels of speeding cars, traffic volume or crashes. They are also installed in areas that don’t have a marked crosswalk, but are on roadways where pedestrian deaths and injuries are common.

How do speed cameras and limits fit into this?

This fall, speeding drivers caught at 18 spots throughout Long Beach will begin receiving fines from automatic cameras. The program is part of a state pilot in seven cities that mandates the ticket revenue pay for new traffic-calming measures.

Proceeds from the fines “can’t be spent on enforcement, general police or fixing potholes. It’s spent on neighborhood traffic calming,” said City Manager Tom Modica.

In January, the City Council also approved lowering speed limits on 77 streets throughout the city. A majority of those reductions restored the state standard of 25 mph on streets with three or fewer lanes that had speed limits of 30 to 35 mph.

In nearly two dozen locations, speed limits were dropped to 15-20 mph to match “existing driver behavior. A dozen streets had speed limits dropped to 25 mph within 500 feet of a park playground.

Until 2021, state law limited a city’s ability to set its own speed limits. This round of speed reductions is the second the city has undertaken since the law changed. The city conducts speed surveys on its streets “on a rotating multiyear schedule” and adjusts speed limits based on that data.

To request a speed survey on your street, email goactivelb@longbeach.gov. You can also request a free yard sign saying “20 is plenty” in English or Spanish here.

This story first appeared on The LA Local.

MacArthur Park will host two more Fall Friday Nights this month, with a Glow Party on Friday and a free outdoor movie night next week as the city continues its community programming at the park.

The free events are open to the public from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. and include free food, games, entertainment, activities and community resources.

Friday’s Glow Party will include a DJ, glow sticks, dancing and interactive games.

The Sept. 25 movie night will feature a screening of “The Super Mario Galaxy” on a large outdoor screen.

The two events are the final Fall Friday Nights scheduled at MacArthur Park this year. The series has been held at the park since 2024 and brings together city departments, neighborhood organizations and service providers.

Fall Friday Nights was created in 2015 as an extension of the city’s Summer Night Lights program.

Families and residents gather at MacArthur Park during Fall Friday Nights on Sept. 4, 2026.

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Courtesy of Central City Neighborhood Partners

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Eduardo Rodriguez, executive director of Central City Neighborhood Partners, said Fall Friday Nights grew from a partnership between the city, Mayor Karen Bass, CCNP and other community groups to create “more consistent, positive, family-centered activity at MacArthur Park.”

CCNP began activating the park this summer through its “Meet Me at MacArthur Park” initiative, which Rodriguez said showed that families wanted more welcoming events and accessible resources.

“The strong community response demonstrated that families want welcoming events, accessible resources, and reasons to return to the park,” Rodriguez said.

About a thousand people attended each of the first two Fall Friday Nights this year, Rodriguez said, for an estimated 2,000 people combined.

The Friday events are also part of a longer-term plan for the park.

Rodriguez said CCNP, through its “Meet Me at MacArthur Park” initiative, plans to establish a recurring presence at the park two days a week. CCNP will provide FamilySource services, youth and family programs, workforce and education resources, financial empowerment, wellness services, food assistance and other community support.

“Our goal is to turn individual events into long-term relationships with families and create consistent, visible, and positive activity at MacArthur Park,” he said.

For Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez, the Friday events are part of a broader effort in MacArthur Park that includes clean teams, street medicine teams, overdose response and infrastructure improvements. 

Hernandez said residents are beginning to notice changes at the park, but argued that they came after years of work.

“This has been years of investment, of time, of money that me and my team have put into MacArthur Park and into Westlake from the moment I got into office,” she said on social media. 

Hernandez has also described that work as part of a broader approach to public safety that extends beyond law enforcement.

“The public safety ecosystem is not just law enforcement,” she said, pointing to street medicine teams and mobile overdose response teams working in the park.

The Los Angeles Police Department and federal agents have spent much of the summer carrying out a multi-phase operation targeting drug activity in and around MacArthur Park, while the city says it remains on track to install a perimeter fence this fall.

Fall Friday Nights “targets communities that may need a little extra care once the school year starts,” according to Bass’ office. 

Free clothing will also be distributed. CCNP will provide free transportation from its Westlake office, Tenth Street Elementary School and Virgil Middle School. Residents can call CCNP at (213) 482-8618 for transportation information.

Last year, Fall Friday Nights brought more than 3,000 people to MacArthur Park over four Friday nights, according to the city. The programming included arts and crafts, futsal, meals and other activities, while unhoused residents could also access medical care and other services.

Gov. Gavin Newsom announced Friday that he is directing state agencies to develop artificial intelligence safety recommendations, some of which were part of a bill he vetoed two years ago.

His change of tune on those measures, including requiring AI developers to include a “kill switch” to shut off certain programs in emergencies, comes in response to growing public alarm over the fast-developing technology’s potential “catastrophic” harms such as AI creating a bioweapon or bringing down the power grid.

Newsom is seeking recommendations from the Government Operations Agency and the Governor’s Office of Emergency Services by Nov. 16, meaning they could form the basis of a special legislative session on the issue. He floated the possibility of calling one in Politico on Thursday.

Newsom has sought in recent weeks to respond to several incidents in which AI agents from leading developers OpenAI and Anthropic broke away from testing environments, gained access to the open internet and carried out cyberattacks on other websites and companies. Earlier this month, a researcher set off a panic when he resigned from Anthropic while warning the technology could “kill all humans;” the researcher’s former colleagues were quick to agree.

The hackings have captivated the public and seem to confirm AI researchers’ fears that the fast-developing technology is improving its own capabilities beyond human control. Several industry leaders last week endorsed Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei’s call for a slowdown in development.

Newsom’s Friday executive order directs the state agencies to recommend changes in state law to implement an external evaluation requirement, as well as requirements that AI companies’ safety frameworks required under the newest law be independently verified. He’s also seeking recommendations on how to require a kill switch, and how to expand the safety incidents companies must report to include “a range of loss-of-control incidents” such as the recent reported hackings.

Regulation is unlikely from the federal government; President Donald Trump remains all-in on speeding up AI development in the face of competition from China and said the calls for a slowdown are a “conspiracy.”

Newsom, a likely 2028 presidential contender, said Friday in a press release that should “alarm every American.”

“We’re going to speed up our work on substantial and responsible AI oversight before it's too late,” he said.

California under Newsom has enacted several first-in-the-nation laws to curb the potentially existential risks of AI. In 2025 he signed Senate Bill 53, which requires large AI model developers to publish frameworks on how they manage safety incidents and assess catastrophic risk — defined as incidents involving 50 or more deaths, chemical or biological weapons or more than $1 billion of theft or damage. They also must report critical safety incidents to the state. Illinois and New York have similar laws.

But the measure was a compromise — a requirement for transparency rather than regulatory control — after Newsom in 2024 vetoed Senate Bill 1047.

Both bills were authored by Democratic Sen. Scott Wiener, whose San Francisco district is home to the most prominent AI companies.

The vetoed measure would have required the largest AI developers to receive safety auditing from third-party, external monitors, develop a kill switch and be subject to clearer legal liability if their technology causes harm. The measure divided Silicon Valley and received fierce opposition from several, but not all, of the largest AI developers.

Newsom wrote then in a veto letter that while he agreed with the need to require safety protocols, the bill could restrict AI development at large companies “at the potential expense of curtailing the very innovation that fuels advancement in favor of the public good.”

“I agree with the author — we cannot afford to wait for a major catastrophe to occur before taking action to protect the public,” he added.

Since then, more in the industry have embraced third-party evaluations. This year, Newsom signed two laws to verify and set standards for those external monitors. But the new laws did not require companies to use them.

In a recent call for a slowdown in AI development that was endorsed by several other industry leaders, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei also called for third-party monitoring; both that company and OpenAI say they will commit to the practice.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

This story first appeared on The LA Local.

The Los Angeles City Council on Wednesday approved a series of measures that halt the rebuilding of the burned Lineage warehouse in Boyle Heights and that steer funding toward fire recovery efforts.

In a unanimous vote, the City Council barred the Los Angeles Department of Building and Safety (LADBS) from issuing any rebuild permits until after the Los Angeles Fire Department completes its investigation.

The council also directed the Department of City Planning, the city attorney and the LADBS to present an interim control ordinance prohibiting permits or certificates of occupancy for large cold-storage warehousing and distribution near residential neighborhoods and sensitive areas like parks, schools, day care centers and libraries in Boyle Heights. 

The ordinance, if approved, would be in effect for 45 days, with an option to extend by 10 months and 15 days. It could be extended by an additional year, or until the “appropriate land use regulatory controls have been prepared,” according to a city staff report. 

“This Lineage fire exposed the cost of systems that have concentrated industrial risk in working-class communities of color for generations,” said Councilmember Ysabel Jurado during the council meeting. 

“A facility should not be able to request a like-for-like rebuild while the fire investigation remains active and the surrounding community is still living with the consequences,” she added. 

Jurado pushed forward the measures, noting that “recovery doesn’t finish when the site is cleaned up.”

“Our responsibility is also to demand accountability and strengthen protections so residents do not experience a disaster like this again,” she said. 

Jurado said the measures will ensure Boyle Heights residents “aren’t left to navigate recovery alone or bear the financial burden of an emergency they did not create.”

The council also directed city staff to explore the feasibility of establishing a fund of up to $10 million to support the affected Lineage community. 

It also called for the reallocation of up to $940,000 in Los Angeles County Fire Assistance Grant Funds to the Boyle Heights WorkSource Center for Lineage Fire Recovery to support impacted workers and businesses. 

Additionally, council members instructed the LADBS and the city attorney to provide recommendations for increasing penalties for notices of violations “on projects that impose a significant impact to the community,” as seen in the Lineage fire. Recommendations should include a fee and fine structure that ranges from $25,000 to $1 million per fine, according to a city staff report.

Years after generative artificial intelligence software became widely accessible, the University of California system still does not have a consistent approach to how AI is used in classrooms, according to its faculty and students.

“The situation is contradictory and also extraordinarily fluid,” professor Rita Raley told the university system’s Board of Regents on Wednesday. “In one class, students are permitted to use AI, in another, they're cautioned against it, and in a third, they're told it's prohibited.”

Raley, a professor of English at UC Santa Barbara, heads the breakout group that will define what AI literacy means for UC, and will make recommendations on how to cultivate AI in classrooms across the UCs. The big question the working group is grappling with, Raley said: What every student needs to know about artificial intelligence.

“If we are indeed moving toward automated education, then we have to ask what a UC degree will mean. It will have to mean more than skills because these too can be automated,” she said. “... [W]e must now give students the critical judgment to ask what this technology is, who needs to be accountable for it, how to use it, when to refuse it, and what it could be instead.”

Jayha Buhs-Jackson, UCLA’s undergraduate student body president, says she does not like AI, so she does not use it.

She agreed that the university does not have a “succinct” AI policy. Some of her professors, Buhs-Jackson said, strictly do not allow AI in the classroom; others allow it for research and coding.

She said UCLA has its own internal AI committee, which she was just appointed to.

“ I'm curious to see … how I could use my voice as president to discuss and uplift the undergraduate student voice related to AI at UCLA,” she said.

UC vs CSU approach

The UC system currently does not have a single systemwide AI product or mandatory AI protocols in place.

Instead, “eligible employees have access to frontier AI tools from a variety of vendors including OpenAI, Microsoft and Google. Access is intended to support activities such as analysis, research, learning, and operational efficiency,” a University of California spokesperson said.

The university system also has a Master Service Agreement in place with OpenAI, but it does not include a minimum spend commitment or prepurchased licenses. Schools under the UC umbrella can purchase OpenAI products through the agreement.

UC’s approach stands in contrast to the one California State University took.

In 2025, the nation’s largest public university system signed a nearly $17 million contract with OpenAI and made a suite of ChatGPT tools available to all its faculty and students.

At the time, CSU spokesperson Amy Bentley-Smith told LAist, the goal was for all students to have “the same access to the tools and learning opportunities that will prepare them for the future,” regardless of which campus they attend.

Still, the rollout was heavily criticized as students and faculty were left on their own to figure out how to use AI. And in a 2025 survey of CSU students, over 60% said AI has negatively affected their learning experience.

What's the best approach for schools?

The different approaches taken by California’s public university systems demonstrate that higher education is still grappling with how to confront — or embrace — this technology.

Universities across the nation have to find ways to work with AI, said Justin Reich, a professor of digital media and the director of the Teaching Systems Lab at MIT.

But we also do not have a framework for what to do or how to implement AI in higher education, he added.

 ”The right strategy is to come up with a systematic series of experiments, where you're testing hypotheses, in particular, by looking at student learning experiences and student learning outcomes,” Reich said.

The University of California’s AI steering committee overall is tasked with “developing a coordinated approach that allows UC to use its systemwide scale while recognizing the distinct needs of its campuses, medical centers, laboratories, faculty, researchers, staff, and students,” according to a University of California spokesperson.

Reich said it is great that the University of California has multiple voices involved in the steering committee.

“I  would encourage any university system to have students play a central role in directing their AI response pretty much at all levels,” he said. “Especially in a system as complex as UC, where you have so many students that have so many different kinds of expertise.”

The UC AI steering committee has one student voice on it. Stephanie Valadez, an ethnomusicology graduate student at UCLA and president of the UC graduate and professional student council, says she would like to see more. She’s concerned about the environmental impact of AI and the negative impact on “underrepresented communities that are living near these data centers,” she said.

In the classroom, she hasn’t had to use AI.

“ All of my professors say, ‘Don't use AI. Just don't use ChatGPT, don't use Claude, don't use any of that stuff,’ for multiple reasons,” she said. “Being in the music department, as an artist, we also are very conscious of having our work stolen, having what we produce then go on to train AI.”

The training a Ph.D. student is seeking, Valadez said, you would not get from AI.

“ We don't want our brains to atrophy while we're trying to get better at what we're doing,” she said.

What comes next for UC

UC San Diego and UC Irvine, Valadez said, have rolled out TritonGPT and ZotGPT, but she’s heard from other board members that students aren’t using  the AI tools as much as the university would like them to, adding that there has been “a lot of pushback from students.”

James Milliken, the University of California president, said the committee’s guiding principle is AI “for humans and for humanity” and how it “ can advance human potential, not diminish it.”

The committee had its first meeting in June, where five working groups were created to explore how to use AI in clinical research, curriculum development and “public benefit” among other things.

Come October 2027, the committee will come to Milliken with a proposal for a UC sovereign AI cloud. This means UC could have its own hardware and processing power to build, run and train AI models.