A pedestrian was struck and killed by a Metro train Saturday night on Long Beach Boulevard, prompting police to shut down a stretch of the corridor for hours as investigators worked the scene. Long Beach police officers were dispatched to Long Beach Boulevard and 23rd Street at 8:52 p.m. after the collision, according to police.
Long Beach Police Lieutenant Jayson Torres told City News Service, as reported by MyNewsLA.com, that fire department personnel determined the pedestrian was deceased at the scene. No description of the victim was immediately available, and an investigation into the death remained underway, per Torres.
Long Beach Boulevard was closed in both directions between 23rd and Hill streets following the crash, and the public was asked to avoid the area, according to the same report. The closure came amid ongoing efforts by police to piece together the circumstances that put the pedestrian in the path of the train.
A Second Fatal A Line Strike in Two Days
The Long Beach collision landed just two days after a man in his 60s was struck and killed by a southbound Metro A Line train near Southwest Museum Station in Highland Park, a crash that officials said marked the fourth fatal A Line collision of 2026, as Hoodline previously reported. That early-morning crash forced Metro to run bus shuttles between Heritage Square and Highland Park while LAPD's traffic division investigated.
It also wasn't the first fatal strike this year along the A Line's southern reaches. On April 20, another pedestrian was fatally struck by an A Line train along the 4300 block of South Long Beach Avenue in the Central-Alameda neighborhood of South Los Angeles, with Los Angeles Fire Department paramedics pronouncing that victim deceased at the scene.
Trains Sharing the Road With Long Beach Traffic
Following completion of the Regional Connector project in 2023, the Metro A Line stretches 48.5 miles across 44 stations between Long Beach and Azusa, making it the longest light-rail transit route in the world, according to the California Public Utilities Commission. Through Long Beach, the line runs at grade in the center median of Long Beach Boulevard, crossing 31 at-grade highway-rail intersections where trains share signals with cars and pedestrians.
That street-running design has long concerned regulators. Back in 1993, the CPUC's Resolution SX-53 authorized specialized light-rail vehicle signals and illuminated train signs along Long Beach Boulevard specifically to reduce collisions. Metro has noted that a 47-ton light-rail vehicle traveling at its maximum speed of 55 mph needs roughly 600 feet — about the length of two football fields — to come to a complete stop, even though trains typically run at posted street speeds up to 35 mph along median alignments like this one.
In 2015, Metro authorized a $30.175 million budget to install active pedestrian crossing gates at 27 intersections along the former Blue Line, funding 108 gates along the corridor after CPUC safety mandates. Despite those investments in gates, signals and fencing over the past two decades, fatal collisions have continued along the line's street-running stretches.
Long Beach's Deadliest Year for Traffic Fatalities
The Long Beach crash also arrives amid a documented surge in pedestrian deaths citywide. Long Beach recorded 53 fatal traffic collisions in 2025, its highest annual death toll in more than a decade, with pedestrians and micro-mobility riders accounting for 32 of those fatalities, according to LAist — a figure that exceeded the city's 29 homicides recorded the same year. Federal crash data cited by SafeStreets Insights shows that 80% of pedestrian fatalities in Long Beach occur after dark, a pattern consistent with the 8:52 p.m. timing of Saturday's collision.
Long Beach Mayor Rex Richardson proposed creating a dedicated Traffic Safety Division within Public Works in August, as the city hit its target deadline for Vision Zero, the safety plan it adopted in 2016 with a goal of eliminating traffic deaths by 2026. The proposal came just weeks before Hoodline covered another fatal crosswalk death on Alamitos Avenue that underscored the same pedestrian safety pressures now facing city leaders.
Federal Railroad Administration statistics compiled by Operation Lifesaver rank California first in the nation for rail trespassing casualties, with trespassing and highway-rail grade crossing collisions accounting for more than 95% of all rail-related fatalities nationwide. Investigators have not yet said what brought the pedestrian onto the tracks at 23rd Street, but the crash adds to a pattern that has made California the nation's leading state for this kind of tragedy.
