Dear Editor,
Pacific Coast Highway is our most important and often only way to travel and transport for so many activities like schools, work, and life. People use it as a speedway unfortunately, as we all know and condemn. People use it for scenic drives, which in many ways we are blessed to have as part of our lives in Malibu. People use it to distinguish our wealth — do you leave on the “oceanside of PCH” or the “other” side — but I couldn’t be happier living in Malibu PERIOD. But now PCH has turned into “Prison Car Hour” — driving towards Santa Monica in the mornings during the week puts you in traffic prison for 30 minutes to an hour. We all know that there is no reasonable alternative and for those of us who have jobs, schools, and part of our lives in that direction, this PCH project literally puts us in prison for days of our lives in total.
While I don’t know the exact specifics of the project — I do see the work being done, because our family drives by that area six to 10 times per day, with the overall work minor at best — I have never seen a true reason to block an entire lane. So while I do not question the overall project validity, the way this project is being managed is about as bad as one can imagine.
Time: When is the worst time to cut eastbound PCH to one lane? Weekday mornings, of course, so the project starts around 7 a.m. and is usually done by 2 p.m. How about letting those hard workers sleep in a little longer — start the lane cut at 10:30 a.m. and not so early in the worst traffic hours.
Labor: I see usually one truck doing some work on the side of the street. How about 10 trucks and cut the six-month project in three weeks — we would be done by now.
Lanes: Why are we closing lanes going both ways doing construction or road work at the same time? There is no back-up going westbound in the morning even with one lane. How about cutting that to one lane and making the eastbound two lanes while the project is going on — my 7-year-old pointed this out to me without any clues from me.
Overall, I just feel our time is not being considered at all in this project, and while I know we are not in a prison, here is my math of the time wasted and taken for no valid reason in this project: Six months = 26 weeks = 130 days. Take on average 30 minutes per day (and that’s a low estimate) — you just took 65 hours of our lives — take out eight hours of sleep and this puts all daily drivers in a prison-like setting for four full days or more!
Please fix this problem — quickly!
Erik Hochstein, Malibu