What a great piece of journalistic “spinmaking” has appeared in our local newspapers! And what great timing, the week before the yearly Malibu Art Festival, which brings thousands of tourists and spenders to our community.
Do Malibu citizens really look that stupid? Are we, who travel our lone highway every day, going to believe His Supreme Public Works Highness and Director John Clement, who has declared that the delays on PCH are five to seven minutes in the morning and up to 15 minutes in the afternoons? Get real, John. At what times are you traveling? Between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m.? In the real world, delays between 30 minutes to one hour during morning and afternoon rush hours are more likely. Please tell me, Mr. Clement, how do you squish 40 minutes into 15 (your reported maximum delay) when traffic is backed up, bumper to bumper, between Topanga Canyon and Las Flores?
And since when are our drivers taking this “situation” in stride? Take a poll and I think you’ll find Malibuites attitudes bending towards “increasingly hostile road rage.” This situation isn’t fun. We can’t travel in and out of Malibu on weekends to visit family, friends or attractions on the Westside. And please don’t insult us by telling us how wonderful our alternative routes are working. Have you noticed the Ventura Freeway closely resembles a parking lot during rush hours and all day on Saturdays and Sundays? This is a good alternative? Not.
One possible solution would be for Public Works to find some way to make room for three traffic lanes which could be adjusted to two lanes going into Santa Monica during the morning commute with one lane coming into Malibu, and switch the lane configuration with traffic cones to two lanes going back into Malibu after 3 p.m. and one lane going into Santa Monica. But this might take one or two of your diligent workers off the job for 15-20 minutes a day moving cones. Perhaps that’s too big a sacrifice for our convenience.
I, for one, am not happy with your new “temporary” design for PCH.
Linda Caplan