Agoura Hills Evacuation Plan Sends Malibu Drivers on 8-Mile Detour Play

Officials in Agoura Hills are pledging to work with Malibu and other cities in the area on a regional fire evacuation plan.

This comes after the city council in Agoura Hills approved a controversial change in the city's general plan — the section that handles emergencies.

Some residents in the Cornell and Malibu Lakes area have blasted this element of the general plan for dramatically underestimating traffic loads on Kanan Road at the 101 Freeway.

At the city council meeting last week, an Agoura Hills traffic planner said the number of cars heading up Kanan Road to the 101 Freeway can be handled at the interchange. But if Kanan jams at the 101, traffic from Malibu can always cut over on Mulholland Highway and proceed to Las Virgenes Road.

This is what the traffic engineer actually said:

"For the fire coming from the north, the most critical community that would evacuate into the city is the option just south of the city as well as further south of the city. And for a fire south of the city, it is analyzed that the portion of the community near the city would evacuate in, and other households would need to use other routes, including along Mulholland to Las Virgenes."

Let's follow that path, recommended by the Agoura Hills traffic engineer. Vehicles fleeing Malibu during a fire should:

Go up Kanan Road until they hit the traffic jam. Circle back to Troutdale, go south a half mile, then go east on Mulholland. Proceed 5 miles on twisty, curvy, mountainous Mulholland over to Las Virgenes. Then blend in to the traffic coming up Malibu Canyon.

Total: 8 miles.

Not one member of the Agoura Hills city council questioned that. Instead, city council member Deborah Klein Lopez lectured the people worried about emergency access, telling them that the general plan emergency element is not a blueprint for growth.

"It's not a housing plan. It's not an evacuation plan. It's not even a likely scenario because it assumes a full build-out of projects that would take decades to put into place. So it's conservative on so many levels. It's not the scenario we face today."

Part of the problem with the Agoura Hills safety element is that it assumes only 100 cars per hour fleeing up Kanan from the mountains region during a fire. And no cars at all coming from the city of Malibu.

But Agoura Hills Mayor Jeremy Klein says the safety element is not a plan — it is just a framework.

"This is a starting place. This does not greenlight anything. Anything is how we can plan for our future. I will facilitate and work on a coordinated effort with different counties from unincorporated county, from Malibu, from Oak Park and come up with regional strategies."

Anti-growth advocates in Agoura Hills have been using the safety element as a political weapon against the current city council. And they point to the ugly and half-finished apartment building along the 101 Freeway near Kanan Road as an example of what is wrong over there.