Caltrans drops roundabouts, scales back PCH safety plan Play

Caltrans officials Tuesday night walked away from earlier plans to remove the center left turn lane on Pacific Coast Highway in the La Costa Beach area. The state has also revealed it is no longer talking about putting in a pair of roundabouts at Rambla Pacifico and Las Flores Canyon Road near Duke's Restaurant.

The state is also giving up on any talk of widening the road to full boulevard status. That would mean taking away slivers of property from houses along the road, and there's no money to do that.

At a workshop meeting Tuesday night, the state said it is now proposing a more modest plan to try to squeeze in a sidewalk — not two but one — and two bike lanes.

This is on the section of PCH from Duke's down to where the four young women were killed in 2023, and then on down to the fire station at Carbon Canyon.

To make room, they're going to narrow the traffic lanes and narrow the center median. In fact, at the fire station and for about 500 feet, they'll have to eliminate the center median lane.

It appears from this plan that there's room for a sidewalk only on one side of the highway, but on which side has apparently not been decided.

There is not money yet for this project, which would cost around $11 million, and it wouldn't start for at least four years.

But there is state money, however, already budgeted to replace the bridge over Las Flores Creek down at Rambla Pacifico, and to widen the highway there by about 20 feet between the two signals. No new property would be needed for that, the state says.

Lynn Bieler is the owner of the flower shop down at Las Flores Creek. She made a plea for the state to replace that old bridge, which backs up the creek and floods every time it rains heavily, with mud ending up in her flower shop.

"The bridge is 100 years old, 40,000 cars are going across it every day.

"It is in the top 100 oldest bridges in the state of California, and there are only 25,000 bridges in the state.

"So something is going to happen. We all know El Niño's coming., we all know that.

"You have the engineers. You know how to do all of the things that need to be done, so all of that mud doesn't come barreling down that canyon on top of us."

The bridge project is scheduled to start in about two years and be finished in about four years. Unlike the road configuration changes, the bridge replacement has already been funded.

One grand idea that was jettisoned was the twin roundabouts at Las Flores and Rambla Pacifico.

Damian Kevitt, a Los Angeles activist and leader of Streets Are For Everyone, said the loss of the roundabouts in Malibu is sad but inevitable. "As much as I am personally a fan of roundabouts, I don't think it's a feasible option — cost-wise, displacement and things like that.

"I don't think it's ever going to happen in a million years. So thank you for presenting it, take that off the table."

Caltrans has a complicated system of scheduling major projects.

This fall it's going to repave the road in eastern Malibu. That's already paid for.

That's a three-year-long project that will supposedly include the addition of striping for bike lanes.

In about two years, the state has the bridge replacement money programmed to start the Las Flores Creek bridge replacement between Rambla Pacifico and Las Flores Canyon Roads. It is a two-year project that is scheduled for completion in 2031.

Side note:" ther Trancas Creek bridge was a 2-1/2 year project that is still incomplete, six years after it was started.

Marlon Regisford, the deputy director for Caltrans' L.A. district, said it might take four years from now to begin the first phase of the safety project ... just 8/10 of a mile long ... to go under construction.

"You could estimate that, but during the design phase, we may encounter utility concerns, we may encounter right-of-way issues.

"Pacific Coast Highway is known for having right-of-way issues that are not standard typical things that we encounter.

"So that's something that may take one or two years.

"After the design and right-of-way and utilities are completed, then we can program our construction phase and then hopefully go out to bid."

And that's just for the 4,800 feet of Pacific Coast Highway between Las Flores and Carbon Canyon. The other 20 miles of PCH in Malibu would be rebuilt even later.

This was just the first in a string of numerous Caltrans meetings about Malibu's Main Street, with more coming up this fall.