Final repairs and completion of phases are taking place on local roads from Pacific Coast Highway to Las Flores Canyon, Hume and Corral Canyon roads. But the Corral Canyon traffic signal will be delayed for two months.
By Hans Laetz / Special to The Malibu Times
Work on local roads and the Pacific Coast Highway to repair damage from last year’s winter storms is ongoing, with some phases of road repair projects wrapping up, and workers readying to move on to other phases.
State Transportation Department officials say they have secured funding for the final repairs to Pacific Coast Highway at Sunset Mesa, near the Charthouse Restaurant, where pavement was damaged by last year’s cliff collapse. And phase one of a project on Las Flores Road below the Hume Road slide has wrapped up. Meanwhile, the city has just finished mapping the large landslide at Corral Canyon.
At the Sunset Mesa landslide, a Caltrans official said a grinding and paving replacement for northbound lanes of the highway will be undertaken Jan. 23, weather permitting.
“We ran out of funding, and had to secure money from another source,” said Dave White at the Caltrans District 7 headquarters in Los Angeles.
White said barriers will be removed and the road returned to its original condition by the end of January.
“There may be some lane closures while we restripe the area,” he said.
The highway pavement was damaged as Caltrans contractors brought down a cliffside of rocks that cleaved off Sunset Mesa after a series of large storms took place beginning late December 2004. Malibu residents were subjected to two-hour traffic delays when the highway was restricted to one lane in each direction, a condition that persisted for several months until the current four-lane detour was configured.
Repaving Pacific Coast Highway, and moving the lanes back from the ocean, will restore a center median lane and shoulders used by the hundreds of bicyclists who use the highway weekly, officials said.
Phase one of work on Las Flores and Hume roads was recently completed, which required removal of 30,000 cubic yards of soil from atop the Hume landslide. The hillside was graded and drainage was improved so the remaining slide area would become less saturated in coming rains. Also, a wall was built protecting Las Flores Canyon Road from any remaining debris that could fall toward the roadway. A large temporary pipe can be seen coming down the hillside on Las Flores, which is meant to drain water that would pool on top of the Hume Road slide. Any rainwater from the pipe would drain into Las Flores Creek.
Ken Pellman, Los Angeles Department of Public Works spokesperson, said the drainage system has “been performing pretty well in recent rains.”
The work had required complete closure of Las Flores for two months everyday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. The road is now open. Pellman said the second phase of the project planned for the restoration of Las Flores Canyon Road would not cause full closures of the road.
“We will be able to keep one lane open,” he said.
Phase two would involve building retaining walls at four points where the outer lanes failed during last winter’s storms. Three of these points lie between Hume Road and Gorge Road, which will be attended to first, and the fourth is above Hume Road. Done concurrently, the three walls will take three to five months to complete at the cost of more than $3 million. The fourth wall is expected to take five to six months to complete and cost $1.5 million.
High up on Corral Canyon Road, city engineering consultants have finished mapping the large landslide that continues to move Corral Canyon Road down the hill.
“The slippage plane goes pretty deep there, and our original caisson plan would not be deep enough,” said Interim Malibu Public Works Director Granville “Bow” Bowman.
“If we put a little wall in there, any good solid rain would take the wall, the road and everything with it,” he said.
The section of road gave way in 2002, and several hundred residents of the area outside city limits campaigned for the city to repair it. Although the road was realigned and rebuilt, it has again crept downhill, threatening the only access to those homes.
Bowman said the dirt under the road is sliding as deep as 35 feet below the surface, meaning a permanent solution would be enormously expensive. “We could go in and do the easy fix, but we would have to do it over and over again,” Bowman said. “Maybe that’s what we will end up doing, anyway.”
Work is also taking place on Malibu Canyon Road. Pellman said LADPW workers were removing debris that had fallen onto the road, but he did not have further information at press time Tuesday. One lane has been sporadically closed since last week.
In other road-related issues, at Corral Canyon Road and Pacific Coast Highway, motorists who wait-sometimes for long periods -to exploit an infrequent gap in highway traffic may have to wait an extra two months for their long-sought traffic signal. The Malibu City Council has committed city funds to expedite the project, which was as long as 10 years away from state funding.
Bowman said Caltrans officials in Los Angeles had approved the city’s blueprints for the signal, but higher-ups in Sacramento decided to look at the layout of the intersection before approving the plans. “It’s very slow-going, they want another alternative explored with a different intersection configuration,” Bowman said.
This would delay the installation of the signal, scheduled for this spring, by eight weeks, he said.