It is with frustration that all I heard discussed at the May 14 Point Dume Community Association General Meeting about the transportation problem at and around Point Dume Marine Science Elementary School was the one-and-only concept that the city staff has proposed. Ironic that is, because not one of the city employees is a registered Professional Traffic Engineer licensed by the state to design safety improvements. The grant proposal clearly would not be effective toward alleviating the true problem generated by the school: traffic congestion, which occurs at the school, and within its parking lot.
Reverse-engineering of traffic and safety improvements draws disdain for good reason: professional traffic engineering is a science that, when done well, resembles art. It is specifically this science that Point Dume Marine Science Elementary School is being denied via the single, draft grant proposal being bandied about. The proposal is to install sidewalks between the street and homes in existing right-of-way. The assumption that parents will change their ways and make their children walk to school on a decomposed granite sidewalk, instead of being driven, has no basis in fact, or justification with regard to established trends.
I believe it was inappropriate to exclude all other eligible, potential traffic planning improvement possibilities from consideration under this grant, prior to this point. Public Hearings to determine the appropriateness, effectiveness, ramifications, and cost are just a few things that needed to be hashed out by the community. That would have been good planning and assured taxpayers everything was on the up and up. If we wait until the grant is approved and/or funded before conducting appropriate public review, evaluation, and comment, how can the community be assured that the best solutions were submitted and proposed?
Parking is a public resource, mainly for the abutting residences on Point Dume. How much parking would be eliminated by this grant proposal, and how does that situation affect homeowners’ uses and on-site parking requirements under current city code? The longer these questions are avoided, or go unanswered, the more skeptical and untrusting residents will become. If the sidewalk goes in first, all other options will be successive and subordinate since the sidewalk will define the absolute width of the paved street. The students, parents, and teachers, including nearby residents and motorists-at-large, deserve better.
As past chair, and current vice chair of the Public Safety Commission, I have attended several Traffic Engineering conferences at Cal Poly Pomona where multiple case studies of Safe Route to School programs/traffic circulation around schools were presented and discussed, before-and-after-style. Photos showing designated student pick-up and drop-off areas, bus zone, parking, etc., were presented in a large forum of registered traffic engineers commenting and advising city commissioners and council persons accordingly. This has proven to me that a broad analysis and approach is necessary in these matters to achieve the best solutions for each school’s unique situation. Such analysis should begin with a traffic engineer that has specific expertise in traffic circulation around public elementary schools.
Malibu residents, and the generation to follow us, will be stuck with these improvements for the foreseeable future. The threat of expiring grant funds should be no excuse for second-rate stabs at permanent solutions, or insufficient analysis and review, to our children’s need to efficiently and orderly arrive at, and leave, school grounds.
Please do not misunderstand me; without excluding the draft Dume Drive/Grayfox Street/Fernhill Drive sidewalk grant proposal, I assert that all other practical or needed traffic safety concepts be included for serious public evaluation and Public Safety Commission review prior to recommendation to the City Council before submission for grant consideration. There will be one City Council meeting May 27, at the very end, where the City Council is forced to decide whether to submit this draft grant proposal, due to personnel, engineering, or time constraints that short-circuited full community involvement up to this point. Our kids deserve better.
Ryan Embree