Wilmington Bans Trucks on 3 Streets

For the second time in recent weeks, Wilmington residents have won a major community victory with a decision by the Los Angeles City Council to ban heavy trucks from three local streets.

The truck ban, approved Tuesday, follows a June decision by the Los Angeles County Sanitation Districts to relocate a foul-smelling compost facility from Wilmington to Riverside County.

Banned from three of Wilmington’s main thoroughfares will be trucks weighing more than 6,000 pounds. The prohibition could be in effect by late next month, city officials said.

“I think it’s great for the whole community,” said Bill Schwab, a Wilmington activist who with his wife, Gertrude, spearheaded efforts for the ban.

Beginning four years ago, Wilmington residents and merchants first urged the city to prevent the trucks from using Avalon and Wilmington boulevards and a stretch of Anaheim Street as they travel to and from the Port of Los Angeles.

Residents and merchants said the heavy trucks had not only affected traffic in the area, but posed a noise and safety problem for neighborhoods and shop owners.

Under the restrictions adopted Tuesday, the trucks will be banned from Avalon Boulevard, between B Street and the Carson border; Wilmington Boulevard, from C Street, to the Carson border, and on Anaheim Street, from Eubank Avenue to Figueroa Street, unless they have local deliveries or pickups in Wilmington.

City officials, including traffic engineers, said the restrictions are designed to reroute the trucks to Pacific Coast Highway and other streets away from residential and commercial areas.

Enforcement will not be possible until traffic signs are posted in Wilmington. A city transportation official said Wednesday the signs are available and should be posted about the time the ban becomes law in August.

In a related action, the council’s Transportation Committee, which recommended the truck ban, asked the city’s Transportation Department to assign traffic control officers to Anaheim Street to safeguard students as they go to and from area schools.

Previously, community members and aides to Harbor-area Councilwoman Joan Milke Flores said that additional safeguards for schoolchildren are needed on Anaheim because the street has become a popular parking spot for trucks and that the vehicles obscure the view of both motorists and students crossing the street.