On the heels of a particularly deadly month on Malibu’s roads, on Monday night, City Council voted 4-0 to approve a comprehensive $20 million Pacific Coast Highway safety study and improvement plan, following uncharacteristic enthusiasm from all stakeholders present for the short hearing. Councilmember Skylar Peak was absent from the meeting.
Only a week after the Malibu community came together in almost unanimous agreement that six historic trees, including a native sycamore slated for removal, be saved, there was again an air of goodwill in City Hall chambers as business leaders, residents and activists came together to praise the study, which was published in late May.
The report includes 130 suggested improvements to Malibu’s 21-mile stretch of the iconic highway, from bike lanes to raised medians, additional pedestrian crosswalks and designated underpasses.
“This is a phenomenal report,” Public Safety Commissioner and local Realtor Meril May said. May, along with fellow Public Safety Commissioner Carol Randall, came to speak to Council in praise of the 850-page document, which they themselves reviewed and passed at a joint Public Safety and Public Works Commission meeting in late May.
“I agree with Meril, they’ve done an extraordinary job,” Randall said, adding that though there are improvements that can be made to the study, “I understand that there will be adjustment and refinements to this as we go along.”
Resident stakeholder and PCH expert Hans Laetz praised the document, calling it “the first time [he has] seen a consultant get it really, really right.”
“It’s a wonderful document, and now comes the time to have the courage to get it done,” Laetz said.
Developer consultant and Chamber of Commerce member Don Schmitz agreed with Laetz that the toughest part of the study would be implementation.
“Don’t expect everybody in this community to throw you a parade when it comes time to implement these improvements,” Schmitz said. “Where the wheels come off the wagon is getting it done, because there will be …. political pressure.”
The suggestions were organized by location as well as merit score (meaning the greatest combination of collision relief, community support and congestion relief) that it is predicted the project will create.
Traffic signal coordination in Eastern Malibu tops the merit score list. According to the study, coordination in the busiest corridor in Malibu is meant to create “reasonable gaps for cross streets and driveways,” with the possibility of including a “state-of-the-art adaptive timing system to develop optimized timing plans based upon real time traffic conditions.”
“They were never built at once to be a signal system,” explained Miller, explaining that engineers have to manually change signal times at each intersection between weekdays and weekends. “In the rest of the region, they can do that from a computer at their control center.”
Other top suggestions on the merit-based list include a similar (but lower-tech) timing plan for Western Malibu (between Trancas Canyon Road and Paradise Cove Road) and the widening of the bridge between Las Flores Canyon Road and Rambla Pacifico Road.
State-of-the-art, pedestrian-activated flashing lights at crosswalks in Eastern Malibu are also on the list, as is lane narrowing in Western Malibu to encourage vehicles to slow down.
One possible issue with the improvements could be cost, which rings in at an estimated $20.63 million, an area that representatives from Stantec, the company contracted to complete the safety study, glazed over.
“I don’t think anything in here is going to be so impossible to fund that it’s going to be looking for money for years and years and years,” Rock Miller, senior principal for Stantec, said. Miller explained that many of the improvements, such as raised medians, could be done incrementally along the highway as funds are secured.
Funds for the project could come from the County Measure R, which provides tax money for transportation improvements.
Because a large portion of Measure R funds have already been allocated for other improvement projects, Mayor John Sibert warned that moving the money to fit into the new safety study’s suggestions could take some work.
“We need to make sure that we sit down fairly soon and look at how we might re-prioritize based on the recommendations here, because that’s going to have to go through the Council of Governments to approve changes,” Sibert said.
