Put end to closure

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1245

Perhaps by the time you receive this letter, the Malibu City Council will have come to their collective senses and re-opened Civic Center Way. Everyone I’ve talked to in Malibu certainly hopes so.

I spent 45 minutes returning home to Malibu this afternoon in traffic on Pacific Coast Highway-on the stretch from Carbon Canyon to Cross Creek, normally a 5-minute drive. Why? Because of traffic resulting from the Civic Center Way closure. I spent 15 minutes today stuck in traffic on Cross Creek Road heading for Pacific Coast Highway. Why? Because of traffic resulting from the Civic Center Way closure. Does it make any sense that a trip between Howdy’s on Cross Creek Road and PCH should take 15 minutes? No. But that’s how long it took because there was so much traffic on PCH that Cross Creek traffic couldn’t feed into it.

Cars that would normally use the Civic Center route to Malibu Canyon were forced to remain on PCH, thereby causing totally unnecessary-and preventable- gridlock. Traffic was so backed up trying to get into the left turn lane into Webb Way that it was well out into the left-hand lane of PCH. People in the cars didn’t know what to do, pulling around other cars and, in the process, causing a few very dangerous near-miss accidents. And this was only in the time span that I was sitting there. This situation is an accident waiting to happen.

I, and everyone I know here in Malibu, implore the City Council to reopen the road and get things moving again. Traffic is bad enough without the mayor and the City Council making it any worse. The recording on the city hotline states that the closure is to “improve traffic safety and create a pocket park.” If anything, this is only putting traffic safety dangerously at risk, certainly more so than before the closure. I wouldn’t want to be someone in need of a sheriff or a paramedic. This traffic surely will only serve to impede their progress. How about that as a safety concern? As for the pocket park, well, just another unneeded idea from our City Council. Re-open the road!

Brenda McKeller