Over the past three years, accidents on Pacific Coast Highway have taken nine lives and caused frequent traffic nightmares on an all-too regular basis.
The city held a meeting last week for residents to discuss those concerns and more, but it’s unclear how far their complaints and fears will go toward improving safety on the highway.
Feedback from the meeting, which was attended by about 50 people, will be incorporated into a PCH Safety Study that began in 2012. Public comments tended to be complaints that speed limits on PCH are too high, a lack of speed enforcement and a dislike of paddle dividers.
The study is mainly paid for by a Caltrans Partnership Planning Grant (with some contributions from Malibu), with project administration being handled by the Southern California Association of Governments (SCAG). The final report, which will identify problems and recommended solutions and funding options, will be presented to the city by the end of June.
Rock Miller, senior principal with Stantec, noted that the “fatality locations tended to be more random than accidents in general.” In other words, there wasn’t any one spot on PCH where a fatality was more likely to occur.
Miller did say that “most collisions are from John Tyler Road to Topanga Canyon.” The worst collision spot on PCH in Malibu is between Sweetwater Mesa and Carbon Canyon. The second worst is at the intersection with Las Flores and the third worst is at Big Rock.
Miller said he was aware that most locals think Las Flores is the worst intersection, but that closer study revealed a lot of accidents had been erroneously reported as Las Flores when they really should’ve been reported as Carbon Canyon.
If the public meeting seemed to bring a strong sense of déjà vu to some, it’s because public meetings already took place on the exact same subject back in May 2013. SCAG’s original engineering consultants — LSA Associates, Inc. of Irvine — had been awarded the project in 2012 and performed months-long engineering studies, gathering measurements, observations and data along Malibu’s 21 miles of highway by examining road conditions, determining accident patterns and assessing traffic conflicts.
After hosting two public meetings, LSA released a draft safety assessment report in 2013 identifying over 90 safety concerns along PCH that needed correcting. In fact, some of the problems identified in the draft were almost immediately acted on by Caltrans, including widening the shoulder along certain portions of PCH by cutting back overgrown vegetation and working with the city to implement a 1,000-foot parking restriction on either side of Paradise Cove.
Apparently, there was a fair amount of disagreement between various officials over some of LSA’s proposed fixes — including putting parking meters along certain portions of PCH — so the study languished and was never finalized. On Jan. 1, SCAG replaced LSA with a new consulting team — Stantec Consulting Services, Inc., also of Irvine — to complete the project.
Although Stantec will use as much of the previous work as possible, in some instances they had to collect new, updated information on items like traffic volumes.
Miller gave the latest statistics on PCH traffic and accidents. He said the portion of PCH from Cross Creek to Topanga Canyon has the heaviest traffic volume, with about 50,000 cars per day. The least amount of traffic occurs from Trancas Canyon to County Line, with about 20,000 cars per day.
An informal summary of PCH intersection issues found by Stantec include traffic signal deficiencies, inefficient signal phasing, lack of street lighting with low visibility of pedestrians, a lack of ADA- (Americans with Disabilities Act) compliant sidewalks and crosswalks, and undesirable bus stop locations.
Other noted safety problems relate to shoulders, lack of buffer zones for parked vehicles, signage, visibility, sidewalks and lack of right turn lanes.
The presentation from the meeting as well as a comment card is available at malibucity.org/PCH-SafetyStudy. Public comments will be accepted through Friday, March 6.