Parkmor Road, the street I live on, is a residential street, totally uphill in one direction and totally downhill in the other. For years traffic would turn right off of Las Virgines Road to “shortcut” up to Lupin Hill Elementary both in the morning for drop off and in the afternoon for pickup. At other times the residents of the upper subdivision would use Parkmor as access to their area, driving the street as if it was a major thoroughfare, racing up and down at speeds in excess of 45-60 mph. Several cars parked in front of houses were wrecked by out of control downhill racers. My own mailbox was taken out.
All of this was going on when there was and still are perfectly good, major four-lane roads available that actually afforded faster access to the same part of the subdivision where the school was located. People just stupidly thought that they were saving time by taking a “short-cut.” At most they were saving a few seconds, at worst they were endangering lives and disturbing a neighborhood by recklessly careening through a residential area on a road not designed for that purpose.
The City of Calabasas put a stop to the carnage by closing off lower Parkmor at Thousand Oaks Boulevard and prohibiting right turns onto lower Parkmor from Las Virgines in the morning on school days from 7-9 a.m. Parkmor Road is now the quiet, pleasant residential street it was always intended to be. But to hear the complaints from people who were inconvenienced and you would have thought their whole world was coming to an end. Their litany of complaints was vast and all encompassing and was reprinted on pages A4 and A6 of The Malibu Times on August 28, 2003. “Why in the world was The Malibu Times reprinting these complaints about Parkmor Road?” I wondered. “Parkmor Road is in Calabasas and that issue was settled in 1996. It just does not make sense.” Then it dawned on me the complainers were not ragging about the closure of Parkmor Road in Calabasas but the closure of Civic Center Way in Malibu. It just sounded like the same whiners and complainers but it was not.
They were, however, the same complaints: “I’m inconvenienced,” “emergency response will be slow,” “I’m inconvenienced,” “this will cause traffic congestion on the main roads that I did not use but I will now be forced to use,” “I’m inconvenienced,” “whine, whine, no cheese, more whine.” “did I say I’m inconvenienced.”
Since Parkmor Road was closed to through traffic none of the above mentioned catastrophes materialized except, of course, they were inconvenienced. These arguments did not hold water for Parkmor Road and they do not hold water for Civic Center Way. I am stunned that you actually printed the self-serving photo by Carey Orefice. Anyone who drives PCH can see that this traffic backup is caused 100 percent by normal tourist and commuter flow through the horribly set-up lights at Webb Way and Cross Creek. Take a close look: traffic is backed up south-bound at Webb Way and probably all the way to Topanga, hardly something caused by re-routing Civic Center Way traffic.
The Malibu City Council made the correct decision on Civic Center Way just as The City of Calabasas made the correct one on Parkmor Road. The whiners should just stop whining. Be polite and go around. It is the neighborly thing to do and it is what you should have been doing all along.
Tom Nefcy