Malibu's Main Street -- PCH -- has been ignored by our city council

By Hans Laetz

Some 21 years after Malibu became a city, PCH is still a deadly disaster. Our city does not own inch of bike lane. We play whack-a-mole with beachgoers who park on the inland side of the highway, and dash across it. We have no safety plan, and we have let our tax money go to Sacramento without applyoing for safety and widening. We let Caltrans, Los Angeles and Santa Monica install new signals east of Malibu, and then ignore the congestion and signal timing screwups.

Hans has specific safety plans for PCH. Two years ago, he gave the City Council an in-depth, 30-page traffic safety study for the western section of highway (you can see it yourself on this link). The LA County Sheriff's Office is using this list of problems and solutions for their new PCH safety plan.

Block by block, Laetz will demand specific safety improvements. If Caltrans won't put up one way signs on PCH, where a tourist got confused and a man killed, Laetz says the city should put them in and dare the state to take them out.

Beach parking on the inland side of PCH at Zuma and Corral beaches is treacherous and should be banned, and Hans will work with the Coastal Commission to move those spaces to the ocean side and make them safe for visitors.

Some here actually say we should ignore the PCH safety issue, or risk attracting more people. Wrong. Bicyclists and pedestrians on PCH are increasing and not going away. Malibu needs to take control of this issue and provide room for bicyclists + to get them out of traffic. Hans says it is far better for Malibu to come up with a PCH safety plan than have one imposed by an outside agency.

We need to pressure Caltrans to add a third northbound lane at Topanga, and to change the signal timing that always favors Valley commuters. Hans will get that done.

The combination sewage transfer station and lunch truck stop at Point Dume is unsafe, unsanitary, and a problem that has been ignored by our city. Large green dumpsters, without reflectors, sit inches from traffic along PCH -- an imminent hazard to safety. Laetz want to know why these unsafe conditions are allowed by Malibu to continue to exist.

Hans says we need to "ramp up" the ad hoc PCH intergovernment committee and use it to achieve state funding for simple safety and capacity improvements on PCH between Malibu and Santa Monica.

Acting as a private individual, Hans has already forced the billionaire owners of Trancas Country Mart to add safety lanes to PCH. Incredibly, by a 5-0 vote, our city council did not require any turn lanes or other safety improvements to be put in on PCH in front of the new stores. Laetz appealed and filed suit, and won basic safety improvements that would have been basic requirements in any other city.

The need for specific safety improvements is obvious. Win or lose, Hans is here to demand that the city stop spending money on studies and start making the road safer.