Blueprint for MALIBU

As more commuters add to Pacific Coast Highway congestion, Caltrans is seeking ways to handle the additional traffic expected from development under the coastal land-use plan and growth in other areas.

Every morning, the mist-enshrouded silence in Malibu gives way to rumbling engines and beeping horns as 2,200 cars converge on Pacific Coast Highway and begin the rush-hour crawl southward.

By the time the slow-moving mass reaches Topanga Canyon Boulevard, another 1,100 cars--mostly San Fernando Valley commuters bound for Los Angeles--join in. Before the morning rush ends, 5,000 cars have snaked slowly through the intersection at Sunset Boulevard.

Because there is nowhere else for the traffic to go, fender-benders at rush-hour or minor landslides from the cliffs above the highway can take on disastrous proportions. Even the switch to daylight-saving time each spring disrupts the highway’s fragile balance as the sun, suddenly higher in the sky, glares into the eyes of drivers.

Squinting motorists hang back a few extra feet, creating “a huge slowdown” on the narrow highway, said Paul Prater, a Caltrans traffic engineer. But like clockwork, frustrated commuters call Caltrans, convinced that the traffic signals are broken or that thousands more cars have mysteriously appeared on PCH.

The PCH bottleneck is nothing new. What is new is the dramatic increase in Malibu commuter traffic from the western San Fernando Valley and Ventura County. Coupled with modest but steady local growth, outside development has sent traffic levels skyrocketing on Kanan Dume Road, Malibu Canyon Road, Topanga Canyon Boulevard and PCH in just the last few years.

Land-Use Plan

“We’ve got stop-and-go here in Malibu, where a few years back there was none,” said Craig Klein, spokesman for the California Highway Patrol’s Malibu station. “On PCH north of Topanga Canyon Boulevard, the morning backup has more than doubled since I got here in 1984.”

Weekday congestion, once limited to the tourist season, is so severe that the California Coastal Commission late last year approved a sweeping land-use plan--a blueprint for controlled growth in Malibu and the Santa Monica Mountains. Among other things, the plan limits the number of new homes allowed in Malibu to 2,110 until PCH is expanded.

In the past five years, traffic growth in Malibu has outstripped official forecasts, sending planners scrambling for a way to address it, and touching off a cacophony of complaints from residents.

In 1982, Caltrans predicted that by the year 2000 more than 50,000 cars a day would use some parts of PCH between Civic Center Way and Sunset Boulevard. But traffic has already overtaken the forecast, reaching 53,000 cars per day just south of Topanga Canyon Boulevard in 1985.

“Everyone was wrong about how far people would drive in order to afford a home and still work in Los Angeles,” said county planner Ray Ristic.

“And now all those people from Ventura County and the West Valley are looking for a way to trim their driving time, and an awful lot of them are picking PCH instead of the Ventura Freeway.”

County planner Bob Hoie said that after hearing a lot of stories about the new congestion, he decided to take a look.

“I must have a death wish or something, but I went out there about 7 a.m. and headed into town on Topanga Canyon Boulevard,” Hoie said.

“I found that if you’re backed up two miles on Topanga, it takes you 18 minutes to get through the light and onto PCH.”

By the time the cars at the back of the line clear the signal, Hoie said, “the stress has just driven them crazy.”

“Eighteen minutes is a real long time, but I’m sure if you asked the motorists how long they waited at that intersection, people would say ‘Oh, it had to be a half-hour or 45 minutes,’ ” he said.

On another trip, driving south on PCH, Hoie said he was moving “about as fast as I wanted at Big Rock, but all of a sudden it just came to a death stop and it stayed that way to Topanga. What I’m trying to figure out is, how in the world can people put up with this, do it every day?”

‘Can of Worms’

Despite the growing pressure to solve traffic problems, any attempt to expand the coast highway will be “a real can of worms,” said Jerry Baxter, deputy district director of Caltrans in Los Angeles.

For years, Caltrans has sought a way to widen the road, which is hemmed in by houses and the beach on one side, and unstable hillsides on the other side that can send tons of rock and dirt tumbling across the asphalt if disturbed.

During the 1970s, when some planners still envisioned Malibu as a bustling resort town filled with condominiums, chain restaurants and big hotels, planners talked of building a second highway along the coast.

Those proposals, now viewed by most planners as nearly impossible financially and environmentally, included building an elevated freeway over the Pacific Ocean. Another plan would have cut the tops off the pristine mountains and filled up adjoining canyons, flattening the foothills for an inland freeway.

The final plan will probably not be nearly so fantastic, nor will it end congestion in Malibu.

Caltrans engineers are studying ways to add a reversible rush-hour lane to the center of the highway, requiring that they widen the road by at least 12 feet.

However, a reversible lane is still many years away, and in the meantime planners agree that congestion in Malibu is going to get worse--far worse.

Cap Questioned

One problem is the land-use plan itself, which was hammered out over several years by the county and the Coastal Commission. Many planners doubt that the 2,110-house cap imposed by the Coastal Commission will limit the congestion.

County planners say that if housing construction proceeds at the expected rate in Malibu, the housing cap will probably not be reached until after the year 2000. But by that time, growth in Ventura County and the Valley, and major commercial developments proposed in the Malibu Civic Center, are expected to add tens of thousands of cars to PCH.

“People who say the cap kind of misses the mark are making a valid point,” Hoie said. “You’ve got to look at what else will be happening.”

In the Civic Center, construction of offices, stores, restaurants, art galleries, specialty shops and hotels could add 2.2 million square feet of commercial space--equal to roughly one-quarter of the office space in Century City.

The key obstacle holding back development of the Civic Center is Malibu’s lack of a modern sewer system.

Stephen Svete, a senior planner for Envicom Corp., a consultant to the county, said that unless the county builds its proposed regional sewer “we’re assuming that none of this Civic Center growth can occur.”

Sewer Controversy

“You won’t start seeing a lot of growth in Malibu until you start getting the multiple-unit developments, and sewers are holding that back right now,” Hoie said.

Incensed over the costly sewer plan and the resulting development and congestion it is likely to bring to the Civic Center, Malibu residents are fighting the county in Sacramento.

Gary Steffan, a member of the Malibu Township Council, said he and hundreds of other residents are writing letters to state legislators, urging that they approve a bill by state Sen. Gary K. Hart (D-Santa Barbara) that would require the county to prove its claim that the sewers are needed to avert a health threat from septic tanks used throughout Malibu.

“Malibu as a quaint community is almost at an end,” Steffan said. “We believe, in our hearts, that it will truly be ruined if this sewer goes through.”

Officials have not released traffic projections for the Civic Center development, but Larry E. Greer, a traffic consultant on the project, said he is devising a plan he hopes will minimize new traffic on PCH by encouraging residents to work and shop locally.

“If you give them a place to work or a decent alternative to shopping at Santa Monica Place, we hope--and think--they’ll stay in Malibu,” Greer said.

Whatever the case, county planners say there is little question that tens of thousands of extra cars will be drawn to the Civic Center if it is fully developed. In addition, they say as many as 16,000 more cars a day will spill onto local roads after Pepperdine University’s long-term expansion is completed in about 15 years.

Phone Complaints

Moreover, the 2,110 homes allowed by the land-use plan’s construction cap will create 20,000 more car trips in the greater Malibu area daily. In addition, once the highway is expanded and the cap is lifted, the land-use plan will ultimately allow a total of 6,582 new homes in Malibu and the Santa Monica Mountains. That figure would mean a total of 56,000 additional daily car trips generated solely by new residents.

Such numbers are horrifying to many Malibu residents, who continually telephone Caltrans, the Coastal Commission and county officials to complain about the congestion troubling their once-sleepy community.

“In the last five years, I have gone from having a 45-minute drive to work to having an hour-and-a-half drive to work, to the exact same job in Inglewood,” said Charly Anderson, a member of the Malibu Township Council.

Fed up with the traffic, Anderson quit her 11-year job as a physician’s assistant and next week begins work as manager of the Malibu West Swim Club.

“I actually quit my job,” she said. “That’s incredible, isn’t it?”

The hamlet of Topanga also faces potentially dramatic development and increasing congestion under the land-use plan, which allows construction of multiple-unit dwellings and commercial complexes in the canyon.

Some county officials say Malibu and Topanga residents will simply have to adjust to the pressures of living in a metropolis.

Some Feel ‘Trapped’

“They’re convinced they’ve got it bad, very bad,” said Peter Ireland, a deputy to county Supervisor Deane Dana. “But I think it’s because, after experiencing a really crowded Sunday afternoon in Malibu, some residents feel as if they’re trapped in their homes. They forget they can still really whip down PCH during non-rush hours.”

Retired Malibu Municipal Judge John J. Merrick, a resident since 1947, said he believes that residents will adopt a philosophical approach.

“When a landslide spills across PCH every year or so, we learn to put up with the worst possible congestion,” Merrick said. “Houses slide right off into canyons, or they burn down to the ground, and it doesn’t seem to faze Malibu, so they’ll get used to this, too. They’ll put on those long-playing tapes and wait in the traffic, but they won’t move away.”

Nevertheless, residents so despise the congestion that they talk wistfully of creating a toll road to discourage outsiders, even though toll roads are prohibited under California law.

“The idea has been raised that there should be housing caps in the Valley, or toll roads or barriers in Malibu to at least keep them out, but none of that is feasible,” said Steve Scholl, a staff analyst for the Coastal Commission.

Indeed, state and local officials say little can be done to slow the onslaught of outside commuters, who are using PCH to escape the exasperating delays on the even more overcrowded Ventura Freeway, where 10,000 cars per hour are recorded near the San Diego Freeway interchange each morning.

‘Z Traffic’

Each morning, a ribbon of cars can be seen peeling off the freeway in Agoura and Woodland Hills, heading into the canyons toward Malibu.

The CHP and Caltrans call it “Z traffic” because it zigzags: Drivers head east on the Ventura Freeway, exit south onto Kanan Dume Road, Malibu Canyon Road or Topanga Canyon Boulevard, then turn east on PCH to the Santa Monica Freeway. In the evening, many return by the same route.

“This area is so influenced by traffic from people who don’t live here that I have almost daily contact with newspapers outside the area,” said the CHP’s Klein.

“We send a lot of press releases on our radar crackdowns and on construction tie-ups to the News Chronicle in Agoura and Thousands Oaks, and to the Enterprise in Simi Valley.”

In late 1985, Klein tabulated four days’ worth of speeding tickets issued by the CHP in Malibu and found that 75% were written to outsiders. He believes the Z motorists account for more than 50% of Malibu’s traffic.

Caltrans says the Z traffic makes up about 30% of the load, but their estimate is based on a single study conducted in 1982, before the big traffic increase.

One of the daily commuters through Malibu is Capt. Bill Brown of the CHP’s Central Division downtown, who saves 30 minutes driving from Agoura to Los Angeles via PCH. But he has to leave his house at 6:15 a.m. to avoid the worsening backup on PCH.

“I have a 45-minute drive, and I’d be looking at an hour and 15 minutes if I took the Ventura,” he said. “Unless, God forbid, the freeway has any collisions, and then it’s even worse.”

On the way home, Brown said, “as far as I’m concerned, the only way to go is through Malibu. The outbound Ventura is just horrendous.”

Shoulder Plan

But even he wonders how long it will be before PCH becomes as bad as the Ventura Freeway.

“With all this growth, I’m wondering if I won’t have to leave at 4 a.m. to get to work at the same time,” Brown said.

Patricia Perovich, a Caltrans traffic engineer, has studied a proposal for converting the southbound shoulder of PCH into a traffic lane for use only during the morning rush hour. She said the morning snarl on the highway sometimes stretches from Topanga Canyon Boulevard back to Las Flores Canyon Road, a distance of 3.3 miles.

“People find the end of the queue on PCH and then it’s just stop-and-go from there,” Perovich said.

“I have letters from people who tell me it takes 20 or 30 minutes to clear the signal at Topanga” once they encounter the tie-up, she said.

In the last few years, Perovich said, morning traffic has started backing up on Topanga Canyon Boulevard too--sometimes as far as 3 1/2 miles--even though county officials say the community of Topanga itself has grown only slightly.

Things have gotten so bad that a feud has erupted between the morning drivers on PCH and those backed up on Topanga Canyon Boulevard waiting to join them.

Each group, Perovich said, is convinced that it deserves a longer green light.

“Depending on which road they use, they all think we’ve got the signals timed wrong,” she said, chuckling. “Actually we’ve got it so fine-tuned that we just cannot improve on it.”

Many mornings, Perovich has stationed her car at the corner, patiently counting cars and assessing whether the timing is fair.

‘There’s No Point’

“Fifty cars from Topanga can clear the signal during the left-turn phase,” she said.

“If I gave more green light to PCH, they’d just get down to Coastline Drive a little faster, cause a terrible backup, and not get to work any quicker. There’s no point.”

Immediately south, inside the Los Angeles city limits, traffic has also grown significantly worse.

From 1982 to 1985, the average daily traffic count on PCH between Sunset Boulevard and Chautauqua Boulevard mushroomed from 38,000 cars to 66,000, according to Caltrans.

Making matters even worse, Caltrans plans to close down some exit and entrance ramps and traffic lanes on the Ventura Freeway next winter to construct one new lane in each direction.

Paul Johnson, operations director at Metro Traffic, which monitors freeway traffic for the news media and other groups, said that during the construction period many more Ventura Freeway drivers will wind up on PCH “as they try to find the path of least resistance.”

“The surface streets that lead into the city from the Valley are going to be packed in pretty solid--Ventura, Van Owen, Topanga Canyon, PCH, you name it,” Johnson said. “Whew!”

Rich Keri of the CHP West Valley Division said Ventura Freeway motorists will be informed of freeway backups and advised of alternative routes, such as PCH, by electronic signs.

“Hopefully that will give people a chance to say, ‘Oh, if freeway traffic is backed up that much by now, maybe I’ll go down Malibu Road or Kanan Road to PCH,’ ” Keri said. “I’m sure we aren’t going to help Malibu any, but we’ve got no choice.”

Brown predicted that the effect on Topanga and Malibu will be dramatic.

‘Severe’ Consequences

“It’s going to create a significant impact on that coastal community and its ability to handle congestion, psychologically and physically,” he said. “The consequences are really severe.”

Many people, including representatives of the Malibu Township Council and county planners, believe the Z traffic will drop off dramatically after the new Ventura Freeway lanes are completed in 1991.

“I think that’s definitely a step in the right direction and will help alleviate our problem,” Klein said.

But amid those hopeful notes, Baxter says he has more bad news.

“The people in Malibu won’t like this answer, but improvements to the Ventura Freeway will be quickly outstripped by new traffic and new development in the western Valley,” Baxter said. “The benefits will be very short-lived.”

Ristic said the county is powerless to control outlying growth, regardless of the congestion it causes in Malibu.

“The question is, how far away do you go to analyze the impact of a project?” he said. “You have to be fair and equitable to the developer.”

Ristic says most of the new growth will be outside county jurisdiction anyway, in Los Angeles city territory in the western Valley and in booming Ventura County.

However, the county is also promoting high-density growth in its own territories in the Valley.

In recent months, ground has been broken for hundreds of apartments at the upper entrance to Malibu Canyon. And immediately across the Ventura Freeway, in narrow Las Virgenes Canyon, the county has permitted construction of hundreds of high-density town houses.

Parkway Calabasas

The county is also pressing for a major six-lane freeway overpass at Parkway Calabasas, and has proposed 3.5 million square feet of commercial development and 2,400 housing units there, all of which will generate 65,000 daily car trips in and out of that area.

But the hustle and bustle of the Valley still seems far removed from Malibu, with its surfboard shops, aging motels and still largely uncluttered beaches.

Robert Patten, an actor and construction supervisor who has lived in Malibu for 20 years, said he and many residents are finding the influence of the outside world difficult to accept.

A few weeks ago, he spent 40 minutes inching along in evening traffic as he drove the 13 miles from his job near the Santa Monica Pier to his home just north of the Malibu Colony.

“Twenty years ago, a friend complained of Malibu, ‘Yes, but Malibu is so far away.’ ” Patten said. “And the answer back was, ‘Yes, but when you get there, you are somewhere .’ ”

Now, Patten says, “It’s become a less enchanted place. One day soon, this may not be somewhere anymore.”