Melissa Giaimo
Assistant Perspectives Editor
As sunny skies beckon Pepperdine students to the sprawling greens of Alumni Park, the crashing of waves lull beachgoers from all over California’s coast to Malibu, clogging the already congested Pacific Coast Highway. The PCH crawl from Los Angeles to campus on warm-weathered weekends is only a taste of the host of traffic problems facing Malibu. Unfortunately, traffic is here to stay.
Trying to control traffic “is like trying to stop tides,” Malibu Mayor Ken Kearsley said.
Out of the14 million visitors who come to Malibu each year, 9 million of them are here in the summer, according to Kearsley.
The freeway-like speeds of Pacific Coast Highway and its large number of travelers juxtapose the small-town feel of Malibu. And residential and commercial growth along the highway detracts from the town’s neighborhood qualities.
Obviously, traffic is bad everywhere near Los Angeles, but in Malibu, people expect the sleepy-town image to mean less traffic.
Locals are fed up with traffic. Upon questioning, 98 percent of locals viewed traffic and congestion as a weakness, in addition to access to and from the city, speed, safety and Caltrans management, according to a report released by Malibu Coastal Vision, a citizen-driven, non-profit corporation, in April 2006 after a year of roundtable surveys reaching 350 Malibuites.
Despite this unforgiving assessment of Malibu traffic management, Kearsley explained the city council can do little to reduce traffic of PCH, because Caltrans controls the highway.
“[The bureaucracy of Caltrans] is like mulling through a jungle,” Kearsley said.
But a director at Caltrans offers a different side.
“We have a very good relationship with a number of cities,” said District Director Doug Failing for Los Angeles and Ventura counties. But “[Caltrans’ relationship with Malibu] is not as efficient as others have been.”
Failing said Malibu’s location between the ocean and mountains, as well as its having only one main road, account for much of the inefficiency that occurs in Malibu. He also said recent Malibu city staff turnover contributes to the slowness.
Although PCH seems like a freeway to outsiders, it is also Malibu’s main residential street. High speeds, the proximity to residences and its winding, narrow road lead to many fatalities a year.
After a motorist killed Public Safety Commissioner Carol Randall’s son-in-law Mark Osborne in front of his home on Pacific Coast Highway, Randall insisted Malibu City Council take action. The council approved Randall’s proposal of six traffic safety signs at strategic locations along the highway. The signs, which research show as effective, alert drivers their speed, urging them to slow down.
But after four-and-a-half years of talk, the city council still has not installed traffic safety signs on the treacherous highway.
Kearsley points to the city’s inefficient relationship with Caltrans as causing the delay in installing the signs.
But Caltrans denies inefficiency in Caltrans as the problem. Malibu has been free to build the signs since Aug. 2, 2006, the date Caltrans issued a permit. He said Malibu could not build the signs because the project’s federal funding expired, issued in 2000. Caltrans has tried to help Malibu build their signs as quickly as possible “and we feel particularly clean on this [issue],” Failing said.
But regardless of what either side says, the signs are still nowhere to be seen.
The Malibu City Council voted for the city to pay for the signs on the proviso that Caltrans will reimburse Malibu. Kearsley expects the project to cost at least $50,000 and does not know when it will be complete.
A malfunctioning traffic light fiasco earlier this month in Pacific Palisades also reveals the broken-down relationship.
Delay in fixing the traffic light near Bel-Air Club near Pacific Palisades caused hour-long delays trapping thousands of motorists. Luckily, Malibu city officials brought relief to frustrated locals, after a meeting with Caltrans, by shutting down the defective signal until repair.
If billionaire Larry Ellison, chief executive of software company Oracle Corporation, receives approval to build one his proposed restaurants, traffic may increase in Malibu. In early March, the Malibu City Council barely approved a zoning change allow to allowing Ellison to proceed, pending further approval. Kearsley opposes the amendment believing it will increase traffic.
Despite the less than efficient relationship between Malibu City Council and Caltrans, the city has tried to prepare for summer tourist season. First, Malibu spends $300,000 a year to fund an extra team of summer sheriffs to ensure visitors’ safety on the roads and beaches. The council has also approved two new traffic signals on Pacific Coast Highway – one at Zumirez and another coming soon at Corral Canyon.
In the past two years, county sheriffs have also stared using “ladar,” a combination of laser and radar. Ladar uses laser beams to track speeds and capture license plates, but radar detectors can not not pick it up. Kearsley said ladar has reduced speeds on Pacific Coast Highway.
The city council is voting this week on a proposal to introduce parking meters in Malibu, Kearsley does not support the bill as a method to limit visitors.
“I’m for funky Malibu,” Kearsley said. “Parking meters and parking garages are not Malibu.”
In Kearsley’s typical unique fashion, he realizes it is important to laugh at the ridiculousness of the traffic situation in Malibu.
“Freeways are like salted peanuts,” Kearsley said. “They generate their own demand.”
It is not fair for those in Malibu to say regulating PCH is all up to Caltrans, nor is it fair for those at Caltrans to ignore Malibu. Until the Malibu City Council and Caltrans learn to work together, traffic will only get worse. Locals may as well follow the mayor’s advice, prepare for a long summer at home and laugh.
03-22-2006