Long Beach as the new Amsterdam? Bike lane boom spark cheers, debate in the city

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Set us as preferred Imagine a sprawling network of roomy bike lanes, generously landscaped to calm relentless traffic.Think Amsterdam with newer buildings and fewer waterways.

That’s been Long Beach’s goal anyway.Instead of wide postwar boulevards, roads would become slower and leaner, transforming Long Beach into a top-five global cycling city, said former city traffic engineer Paul Van Dyk.“Some of that is tongue-in-cheek, but if you shoot for the moon you land in the stars.”Long Beach has been working toward this vision since it adopted its bicycle master plan 25 years ago, now with mounting urgency as auto-related fatalities rise.

The biggest project so far — the Studebaker Road Transformation Project — is bringing this vision to the doorstep of Studebaker Road residents.It has drawn mixed reviews.“The intent of the design is malicious — it’s immoral,” said Joey Schilling, who drives the road six days a week and wrote a social media post criticizing the project that drew almost 1,000 comments.”It’s people who do not use the road trying to tell other people how to use the road.”The $65-million project runs over five miles from 2nd Street all the way up to Carson Street.

It includes bike lanes, greenways and stonescape with fiber-optic cable running underneath.It is crucial to the city’s long-term plan of knitting together 300 miles of bikeways by 2040 to bring bicycle culture to Long Beach, as well as create safer streets.The massive project funded from 13 federal, state and local agencies, gives a glimpse of what’s to come for Long Beach thoroughfares.

The Clark Avenue work is in progress.Pacific Avenue and Orange Avenue “backbone” plans are on deck.

Now Studebaker Road, the biggest, longest and most expensive, is well underway, spending the most dollars and, arguably, drawing the most...