It is no secret that as lovely as Long Beach may be, the parking is absolutely horrific.
Finding parking in residential areas without a guaranteed garage spot is most often an adventure in and of itself, but the ridiculous street sweeping regulations throughout the city compound the struggle.
Drivers can spend extended periods of time, a day’s worth of patience circling neighborhoods for sweep-safe spots. The unlucky ones end up with alarms set for 3:30 a.m. in attempts to outrun the 4 a.m. parking patrol.
The city is earning over $13 million dollars in street sweeping tickets in the course of a year, according to the Long Beach City Council.
Luck does not seem to be on the side of many.
Families, students, employees and visitors consistently bemoan the state of parking, but there was a possible light at the end of the underpass this week.
After years of resident complaints, Long Beach City Council voted on Tuesday to propose a $950,000 budget adjustment, removing the 4 a.m. to 8 a.m. street sweeping restrictions.
The proposal would also reduce the remainder of sweeping time slots from four to two hours and refurbish the 118,000 signs scattered about the city.
Yes, there is an insane amount of traffic on the streets of Long Beach. Residents deserve to live in a city that has respectable standards of cleanliness and attention to detail.
But, what’s going on is overkill.
For all of our environmentally conscious friends, the street sweeping reform has platforms they can get behind, such as water conservation. With California’s drought rapidly worsening, it is not necessary for the city to waste water by cleaning asphalt nearly every day of the month.