Driving Change: Manifesto for the next 50 miles

By Michel Shane · Sun Jul 19 2026

We built a cathedral out of words. Twenty-one miles of coastline, rising into something a future narrator could stand inside, our own Blue Highway, described with wonder by someone looking back at it. That was Part One and Part Two. The comments told me you saw it. Forty-five of you argued about it, mapped it, named the corners where you hold your breath. That map is not a decoration. It is evidence.

Now comes the part nobody wants to write and everybody needs to read: A cathedral built only of prose is still just a rendering. Somewhere between the vision and the ribbon-cutting sits a folding table, a sign-in sheet, and three minutes at a podium. That is where visions go to die in this country. Not from lack of imagination. From lack of a vote.

So here is the manifesto. And here is the news underneath it: this Monday, Malibu votes.

The coast already answered

I have been describing the Blue Highway for a year and a half. Not as a rendering. As a plan. Somewhere in that year and a half, something happened that I did not expect to happen this fast. Santa Monica said yes. Marina del Rey said yes. Redondo Beach said yes. San Pedro said yes. Long Beach said yes. Five stops, signed on, with mayors and county supervisors standing behind them.

Let that sit for a second. Five cities down the coast looked at the same plan and said yes, and evacuation was not even their main reason. They looked at a landing zone and saw an addition to transportation options that are already expanding along this coastline. Boats alongside buses, alongside rail, alongside whatever comes next. Evacuation is part of the case. Down there, it was never the whole case.

Up here, it has had to be. Since 2010, for 16 years. Sixty-three deaths. I am not going to pretend a ferry would have saved all 63. Fewer cars on a road do not always mean slower cars; sometimes an open lane just means more room to speed.What the Blue Highway offers is not a safer version of the same drive. It is the chance to not be on that road at all, on a normal day or the day the hillside is on fire.

I think about what those 63 empty chairs actually mean. Not a statistic. A chair at a table that used to have someone in it, someone this road took at speed, on a curve, at a crossing with no protection. That is one failure. A separate one sits right behind it. The same road that kills in ordinary traffic also failed us as an escape route. We got out during the fires, but with difficulty, with fear, fire behind us and maybe fire ahead of us too, bumper to bumper on the only road out while the hillside burned. Getting out should not require that much luck. Five cities down the coast are choosing a ferry stop because it is convenient. We are choosing it because we know exactly what it costs to have neither problem solved. PCH runs south to the 10 and north to Ventura County. The danger runs both ways.

What this does not do

I know what some of you are thinking, because it has come up in the comments, and it deserves a straight answer: Does bringing a ferry stop to Malibu open the door to SB 79-style density, forced redevelopment, and apartment towers where a parking lot used to be?

No. I went, I checked, I know. You could do the same. SB 79 lists the kinds of stops that trigger higher density: heavy rail, commuter rail, light rail, and certain bus lines. The ferry service was included in an early draft of the bill. It got cut before the bill became law. A pier never made the final list.

What Monday actually decides

Monday is not a vote on whether the Blue Highway works. Five other city councils have already answered that. Monday is a vote on whether Malibu, the city with the worst fatality record on this stretch of coast and the clearest memory of what that same road does when it is also the only way out, is willing to stand behind the idea it started.

I have sat through the meetings. I know the sound of an appeal built to delay rather than improve. I know what it looks like when a small group treats a landing zone the way they treat a bike lane, as a threat to a view instead of a rope thrown to someone in the water. Monday will tell us which version of this city shows up.

Saying yes does not hand this away. Malibu came up with the idea. Malibu can still help shape it — the guardrails, the terms, the details still to be worked out — but you cannot shape water from the dock. You have to get in the boat first.

The ask

To the council voting Monday: Five cities down the coast, with less history behind them, already found their way to yes. Stand behind the idea Malibu gave them.

To every resident who mapped a dangerous intersection in the comments of Part One: Send that map to the council before Monday. Every one of them represents all of us, so every one of them needs to see it. Let them know the vote is being watched by the same people who will cast ballots this November.

Declarative, not rhetorical

We do not need another rendering. We do not need another cathedral. We need this city to choose the water it has been staring at for hundreds of years.

Picture the boat pulling up to the Malibu Pier while the sky is full of smoke, a wildfire has jumped the hillside, and PCH is jammed with cars that cannot move. Picture one more family getting on that boat instead of sitting in that line. That is what Monday's vote at City Hall actually decides. Not infrastructure. A chair that never becomes empty.

You can contact me at 21milesinmalibu@gmail.com