Long Beach Leads in Traffic Circles

Traffic circles aren't quite ubiquitous in Long Beach, but they're around. Riding and walking through the city one encounters circles in neighborhoods rich and poor, new and old.

By Joe Linton

2:15 PM PDT on July 12, 2024

The city of Long Beach has nearly a hundred traffic circles. Photos by Joe Linton/Streetsblog

LongBeachize_Ad_Concepts — This article supported by Los Angeles Bicycle Attorney as part of a general sponsorship package. All opinions in the article are that of the author, and do not necessarily reflect those of LABA. Click on the ad for more information.

More than any other Southern California city, Long Beach does traffic circles. Lots of circles. The coastal city has long been a regional leader in green transportation; traffic circles are one oft-used tool in Long Beach's traffic calming and place-making tool box.

The city has nearly a hundred traffic circles, ranging from a few large-scale roundabouts to scores of small-scale mini raised planters that improve neighborhood intersection safety.

Circa 2008-2009, Long Beach stepped up its livable transportation efforts, especially bikeway implementation. There is still a lot of work to do (many parts of the city remains car-centric), but for a decade-plus, Long Beach has consistently been among the top one or two most bike-friendly L.A. County cities.

Long Beach leadership is responsible for notable sustainable transportation firsts, including the county's first protected bike lanes, first outdoor dining parklets, first bike boxes, first large-scale municipal bike rack program (including the first bike corrals and first attended bike parking station), first bicycle boulevard (now called a neighborhood greenway), early bike-share (the county's second and longest-lasting smart-bike system), and the first contemporary-era light rail in the Metro A Line (in 1990, then the Blue Line). Long Beach has continued to add and upgrade walk, bike and transit facilities, often through benefits agreements where development pays for improvements.

Long Beach currently leads the county in curb-protected bike lane mileage. It hosts regular Beach Streets open streets events. In addition to Metro service, Long Beach is home to the county's highest ridership municipal bus agency (Long Beach Transit, with over 53,000 daily boardings).

And Long Beach has built lots of traffic circles.

LongBeachIze Editor Brian Addison wrote of the city's circles: "They’re great, except they’re not all consistent with the hard stops and yields." Some of the circles include stop signs; some direct people entering to yield to others already in the circle. Addison stated that the traffic circles would be more effective if they were all yields, like the one at 6th Street and Park Avenue.

All-yield traffic circle at 6th and Park - photo via Google Street View

Car-Lite Long Beach's Matt Wehner also offered qualified support for the circles, writing that "in general they can work well," but adding caveats regarding driver behavior.

"Motorists need to remember to yield to anyone who is using the circle," Wehner stated, "and motorists often fail to yield to cyclists." He cited a recent crash at the circle at Vista Street and Park Street when a cyclist was struck by a driver who failed to yield. "She made it out okay, but her bike was totaled."

Wehner also alluded to the circles' "wide variation in quality when it comes to traffic calming capabilities." He compared two traffic circles he commutes through: "One does almost nothing to calm traffic, since it is tiny compared to the intersection. The other, a newer asphalt traffic circle, is much better."

Wehner wants the city to "add other traffic calming features to work together with traffic circles," which the city has done in some places.

Circular Logic: the Benefits of Circles

Traffic circles come in many flavors - from roundabouts (sometimes called rotaries or glorietas) to neighborhood mini-circles.

Generally roundabouts increase car traffic throughput (by eliminating a stop sign or a signal), while somewhat slowing driving speeds. They decrease some of the most deadly left-turn "T-bone" crashes. Roundabout intersections have been found to be safer than signalized or stop sign intersections.

Smaller traffic circles generally don't increase throughput, but they do slow drivers down, resulting in similar safety benefits. Slower car traffic make for safer bicycling and walking. Traffic circles also benefit neighborhood place-making and greening.

Long Beach's circles can't prevent every crash. In 2020, a DUI driver speeding at around 100 miles per hour crashed into a Long Beach circle and went airborne. That modest circle did its job, though, possibly saving lives by getting in the way an impaired driver. The crash resulted in no loss of life, just minor injuries and damage to parked cars.

Roundly Comparing Long Beach to Other Cities

Nationally the city of Carmel, Indiana, touts its widespread successes in replacing signalized intersections with roundabouts. Carmel (population 101K) has 150 roundabouts. They're pretty much all big multi-lane facilities (example).

Seattle, Washington, appears to lead the U.S. in smaller neighborhood traffic circles. Seattle (population 750K) has just over 1,050 circles, mostly modest in scale (example).

It appears that Long Beach (population 450K) has the most traffic circles of any California city, but that is difficult to confirm.

Long Beach does have the most circles for any L.A. County city. Several local cities (including Culver City, Lancaster, Los Angeles, Pasadena, Santa Monica, West Hollywood, and others) have worthwhile traffic circle projects, but none of these places have half as many circles as Long Beach.

Notably West Hollywood and Santa Monica strategically align circles (and other features) to create calm neighborhood greenway streets that prioritize cycling and walking. Long Beach was the first L.A. County city to pioneer this type of facility, and (see below) has smartly aligned many circles to create a calm greenway street network.

Circling Long Beach

Streetsblog counts 92 traffic circles in the city of Long Beach. 79 of these are on public streets. Thirteen are private. A full list appears at the end of this post.

Why so many? Most of these - nearly 50 - are part of the city's recent push for safer streets. Those recent facilities join a smattering of historic circles, public facilities, school drop-offs, housing complex entry points, upscale marina developments, and others.

The place to start is known as "the Traffic Circle" at the intersection of Pacific Coast Highway, Lakewood Boulevard, and Los Coyotes Diagonal. The massive roundabout (featuring a 360-foot-wide inner island) was built in the 1930s and retooled in the 1990s. It's a place that many drivers avoid, and it's even less loved by pedestrians and cyclists.

The city plans to revamp the Traffic Circle, though this won't change the circulation. It will, however, add new water-wise landscaping and wayfinding. Check out the project renderings.

Long Beach's historic Rose Park traffic circle

There are a few of other fairly large circles, including Rose Park, La Bella Fontana Park, and Cover Street at Worsham Avenue.

Long Beach's c. 2007 Cover/Worsham roundabout features the First Around the World Globe artwork

Long Beach also has numerous examples of recent neighborhood greenway treatments where multiple circles line up to divert and calm car traffic on fairly quiet residential streets. 6th Street, 15th Street, Daisy Avenue, Myrtle Street, Linden Avenue, and Vista Street all have multiple aligned circles, sometimes combined with additional diverter facilities.

Sixth Street has thirteen circles within 2.5 miles, making it a safe, quiet walk/bike alternative to traffic-choked Seventh Street.

Traffic circle at 6th Street and Molino Avenue

With thirteen circles (this one at Loma Avenue) 6th Street is a traffic-calmed route across Long Beach

This small traffic circle at Loma Avenue is one of six circles on 15th Street

Traffic circle at 15th Street and Termino Avenue in Long Beach

The east end of the 15th Street neighborhood greenway connects to bike lanes on Ximeno Avenue, making it convenient for cyclists to continue east/west via the Atherton Street bike lanes.

This roundabout at Linden Avenue and Bixby Road is one of the larger recent examples of Long Beach circles.

Aerial photo of the Linden-Bixby roundabout - via the city of Long Beach

The greenway on Linden Avenue features a couple of traffic circles, plus a couple of diverters (also called modal filters) that allow bicyclists to proceed straight while forcing drivers to turn.

Long Beach's Pacific Avenue features bike lanes combined with a couple of traffic circles, including this one at Pacific, 36th Street, and Country Club Drive

Traffic circle at Pacific Avenue and Bixby Road

This 2019 oval-shaped traffic circle (at Bixby Road and Weston Place) received some backlash, but city officials stood up for it. Today it continues to calm traffic.

The Circular Shape of Things to Come

Long Beach is not resisting on its laurels, but is adding still more circles where they're most needed.

As part of its state-funded two-mile long Pine Avenue Bicycle Boulevard project, the city will soon install eight new circles (plus one diverter and several traffic signals). Project construction is currently out to bid.

City's map of Long Beach Pine Avenue Bicycle Boulevard

There's another large scale roundabout planned as part of Long Beach's Shoemaker Bridge Replacement Project.

Rendering of the planned Shoemaker Bridge over the L.A. River in Long Beach. Traffic circle is visible in the middle left.

Long Beach City renderings of the future Shoemaker Bridge roundabout - via project website

Between Pine, Shoemaker, and the city's ongoing safe streets programs, Long Beach will likely have more than a hundred traffic circles within a few years.

Like bikeways, traffic circles aren't quite ubiquitous in Long Beach, but they're around. Riding and walking through the city one encounters circles in various kinds of neighborhoods - working class and well-off, new and old, urban and suburban.

Some residents dislike some of them, but that's probably true of most traffic calming. Perhaps analogous to wise prophets being underappreciated in their own hometowns, many people who dislike internationally proven traffic calming want to drive fast in other neighborhoods, but, even on their own street, want other drivers to slow down.

Long Beach's circles are silent hard-working heroes, day after day looking after the safety of Long Beach's most vulnerable residents. Quietly, steadily saving lives, keeping the peace.

The city - its civil servants, its neighborhoods, its pedestrians and cyclists - have welcomed traffic circles, more than other California cities. But perhaps Long Beach will become even better, safer, and healthier - as it leans in and embraces and expands these circles even more, taking pride in them and the safer calmer streets they represent.

Where Long Beach Goes in Circles

Below is the full list of 92 Long Beach traffic circles as of July, 2024. View as a Google Spreadsheet. (This list is compiled from several sources, and should be accurate, but if readers spot errors, please let Streetsblog know.)

Public traffic circles in Long Beach: