The issue also has detractors who say traffic efficiency and quality of life must be considered in addition to vehicular safety.
By Ward Lauren / Special to The Malibu Times
The traffic accident at Corral Canyon and Pacific Coast Highway last week, photographed by a local resident and pictured in The Malibu Times, has stirred renewed public demand for, as well as controversy over, the installation of a traffic signal at the intersection.
Theresa Tuchman, who lives on Pacific Coast Highway across from the Corral Canyon entry onto the highway, took the photograph. Long an advocate of a signal at the site, she said she hoped it would serve as one more argument in favor of her position.
“I’ve lived here for 10 years,” Tuchman said, “the first seven of which I worked out of my house. I constantly saw near misses, heard the screeching tires and horns, saw accidents. Then one day my neighbor went out to his mailbox; there was an accident and a truck careened off the highway into his front yard and hit him. They had to airlift him out.”
Tuchman said she and some neighbors left a petition at the Unocal station at the intersection to be signed by anyone who supported the installation of a traffic signal there. In two weeks they collected 327 signatures, many from residents of Corral Canyon.
“That gives you an idea of how people feel about that intersection,” she said. “I went in front of the City Council and said we need a signal and I’m going to campaign for it and I’m not going away until it happens. They were receptive; they were very good about it.”
Granville Bowman, special projects manager for the city of Malibu, concurred that the city wants to have a signal there, “ASAP.”
“It’s a Caltrans situation,” he said. “But if we wait for them to install it, they told us it would be several years out. They don’t have the money, so we’re using some funds to help get it going, basically by providing the manpower to get it planned and designed.”
Bowman said several alternatives on how to configure the signal have been presented to Caltrans, citing the difficulty of designing one for that section of the highway.
“If it were just Corral Canyon there all by itself, it would be easy,” Bowman said. “But on the other side we’ve got some houses that sit off PCH, and that driveway doesn’t line up with Corral Canyon. So our next step is to design that intersection to meet with Caltrans’ approval. But [the signal] is absolutely going to happen.”
The photograph of the recent accident coincidentally appeared in the same edition of this newspaper as a letter to the editor from Scott Palamar, who lives in Corral Canyon but opposes the installation of the signal. Palamar has a petition on his Web site for those to sign who are also against the signal. He first prepared a paper petition, which he circulated among his neighbors and quickly obtained 17 signatures, he said.
“Theresa Tuchman is home a lot and sees a lot of problems, I know,” Palamar said. “The error in her thinking is that it happens only at her intersection; but it happens all along PCH. She believes a traffic signal is going to solve the problems. Traffic signals solve some problems but create others. They just slow everybody down. They reduce the efficiency of all travel on PCH and create new rear-end and broadside accidents.
Latigo Canyon resident Jannette Frazier has signed Palamar’s petition. She said a traffic signal will “create another situation where we lock up traffic and make it worse.”
“It could be solved with just having an added turn lane and flashing light, just stopping traffic in one direction,” she added.
Palamar said he felt the city of Malibu has not explored all the possibilities, or Caltrans either. He said a recent study by the city found only one condition-based on the number of cars that traversed the intersection, not traffic safety per se-met the requirement for a signal at Corral Canyon. He said he felt quality of life should also be considered in the general subject of traffic signals.
In his Internet blog, www.corralcanyon.net/signal.html, Palamar quotes the vision statement in the Malibu General Plan that was adopted in 1995: “…Malibu… [is] a unique land and marine environment and residential community whose citizens have historically evidenced a commitment to sacrifice urban and suburban conveniences in order to protect that environment and lifestyle, and to preserve unaltered natural resources and rural characteristics.”
Thus “Malibu’s own vision statement advises against this traffic signal, a ‘suburban convenience’ that will clearly diminish the ‘rural characteristic’ of the city!,” the blog concludes.
“I have met Palamar,” Bowman said, “… I think I can say that we agree that we respectfully disagree. I think it’s very important to have a signal there; the intersection is very busy and very difficult.
“Here in the city of Malibu safety is our number one priority. We’re concerned about human life. I had a gut-ache when I drove by there last weekend and saw that accident.”
Bowman continued: “I would bet a paycheck that this time next year you’re going to have a signal up, or well on its way to being up at Corral Canyon and PCH.”