Last Monday, Malibu’s Planning Commission held a comment session on the Whole Foods Environmental Impact Report (EIR). Here is a bit of what we learned at that session:
This project, which includes a Whole Foods Grocery, a high turnover sit down restaurant, a fast food restaurant plus other retail stores is projected to add an additional 2,300 to 2,900 weekday car trips into the corner of Cross Creel and Civic Center Way. On weekends those number jump to 2,500 to 3,000 new car trips. Every day, 20 to 25 new service delivery trucks will drive down Cross Creek Road to service these businesses. How Cross Creek and Civic Center Way accommodate all this new traffic is not clearly explained in the EIR.
Malibu Residents asked Whole Foods to provide assurances that the traffic generated by their new development on Civic Center Way would not jeopardize the safety of the residents living in Serra Retreat or evacuation plans for the schools and businesses in the Civic Center in the event of an emergency. Whole foods ignored that request.
The traffic counts Whole Foods used to justify their project provided the biggest surprise of the evening. Baseline weekday highway traffic counts were completed in one day, with individuals manually counting the cars for two hours in the morning and two hours in the afternoon. How do you get an accurate picture of the year-round traffic on Malibu roads in only two hours? You don’t.
According to the Whole Foods EIR, traffic on Malibu’s major roadway (PCH and Malibu Canyon) has decreased by 25 percent to 30 percent over the past few years. That’s right. Those lines of traffic you have been sitting in for the last couple of years are simply an illusion. Malibu’s Planning Department needs to make sure we have an accurate picture of this development’s traffic impacts before it goes any further.
Steve Uhring