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Watching teams of workers as they transform Long Beach’s downtown shoreline into a race track reminds me of the persistent tensions between this annual event and pedestrian

life for the other fifty weeks of the year. As construction crews move concrete barriers and chain-link fences into place—marking out the race cars’ route—and assemble towering grandstands for the thousands of spectators who will soon arrive, I am reminded anew how our tidelands have become tailor-made for the event. The shoreline serves the race, not the other way around, an example of misplaced priorities in which pedestrians are literally left in the dust.

 

This is not to say that the shoreline pedestrian wasteland we currently “enjoy” is entirely the fault of the Formula One/CART/IndyCar Racing infrastructure. Ever since portions of the Pacific Ocean were filled in near the mouth of the Los Angeles River, Long Beach city officials have planned the downtown waterfront as a collection of large developments and massive public infrastructure projects. When the downtown area is planned on such a scale, mobility tends to be envisioned in terms of bold gestures that rarely keep pedestrian movement in mind. The design of the waterfront esplanade, stretching approximately from the Aquarium of the Pacific to Shoreline Village, represents on the whole an appropriate balance between intimacy and capacity. However, pedestrian circulation in the remainder of the shoreline area is either scaled too large, is merely an afterthought to the road network, or does not exist at all.

 

The downtown waterfront now consists of a series of single-use structures separated by impermeable public infrastructure, ranging from large parking structures to freeway overpasses, as well as the convention and performing arts center. Further isolating pedestrians is the excessively large block structure in the shoreline area, if these huge area can even be termed “blocks.” The shoreline area, which lies south of Ocean Boulevard, has five demarcated blocks running east to west, while north of Ocean Boulevard it takes fifteen regular blocks to cover the same distance. This development pattern organized around super-blocks makes it very difficult for someone on foot to navigate the waterfront. The fact that there are no less than five parking structures and eleven parking lots blanketing the shoreline area indicates how sadly, the currently dominant usage for our precious coastal tidelands is automobile storage. It would seem that in Long Beach, we perversely meet the California Coastal Commission’s mandate to provide public waterfront access via parking.

 

The “main street” of our shoreline is the appropriately named Shoreline Drive, which runs for two and a quarter miles, from where the I-710 crosses over the Los Angeles River to the intersection of Alamitos Avenue and Ocean Boulevard, in the shadow of the Villa Rivera. It is telling that all but a half mile of Shoreline Drive has no sidewalks whatsoever: this is, needless to say, pedestrian unfriendly. This state of affairs is compounded by the lack of any landscaping that could act as a buffer from the high-speed traffic that zips along this route (at times it feels like Grand Prix all year long), as well as the sparsely planted palm trees; this limits visual obstruction for race spectators, but provides inadequate shade. The incredible width of Shoreline Drive and Pine Avenue provide many opportunities for cars to pass each other during a race, but makes it hard for pedestrians to cross them.

 

This consistent and ultimately damaging prioritization of the automobile (and in particular the Grand Prix) over pedestrians in the shoreline area is clearly reflected in its most recent addition—the Pike shopping and entertainment complex. Intended to provide a pedestrian linkage between the greater downtown north of Ocean Boulevard on the one hand, and the convention center and waterfront on the other, the Pike’s ultimate execution reveals how in reality automobiles have been prioritized over pedestrians. Rather than draw pedestrians toward the waterfront, the Pike turns its back on Shoreline Drive, with an expansive yard on the north side of the road and valet parking lot to the south. As a result, to get from one half of the Pike to the other, pedestrians must embark on a journey across a vast swath of land on either side of Shoreline Drive, an empty space that does not contribute to the urban fabric for most of the year, and has obviously been left open for the sole purpose of installing bleachers during the few days of the Grand Prix.

 

A pedestrian bridge, gussied up to mimic the historic Cycle Racer of the original Pike amusement park, constitutes a kind of giant metallic Band-Aid, patching over and only partially remedying this block-long walk of nothingness. As part of a larger strategy of separating pedestrian and vehicular circulation, three additional (but less nostalgic) bridges raise pedestrians above the street. This has cut in half the number of temporary bridges that must be erected for spectators to cross over the race track during the Grand Prix. While it is obviously necessary to keep people from the race track, segregating pedestrians and cars in this manner tends to leave streets empty of life during the 350 days of the year that the Grand Prix is not taking place.

 

All in all, a large about of unprogrammed open space has been created along Shoreline Drive adjacent to the Pike and along the marina, all in order to augment the existing asphalt parking lots so that the city can erect enough seating for the Grand Prix’s 200,000 spectators. What these spectators do not see is that for the rest of the year, this open space leaves a vacant gash separating the Pike and Convention Center from the marina, aquarium and Shoreline Village, further dividing Long Beach’s downtown from its waterfront.

 

What all this shows in bold relief is that the Shoreline area, from its inception, has not been designed with pedestrians in mind. Despite some remedial efforts to cure some of those ills, we have fundamentally structured the area around the automobile, from performance racing to everyday traffic. The Grand Prix of Long Beach is over 30 years old and the premiere event on the city’s calendar. To suggest eliminating this popular (and lucrative) event would be considered blasphemy. It is an event that presents the city in a very positive light to an international audience, with images of sunshine, oceanfront racing, and stands filled with excited spectators.

 

What is needed, however, is a more honest tally of the price our city has paid in terms of its pedestrian environment, all in the name of converting our downtown streets into a race track once a year. Not all of these sacrifices are needed or even sensible. We must develop the vision to create a downtown that serves its citizens all year long, not just four days a year, and that fosters a vibrant pedestrian environment.

 

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