Malibu eyes $3 million pedestrian underpass at Corral Beach Play

An agreement with L.A. County Metro to use Malibu's local share of Metro tax money to build a pedestrian underpass beneath Pacific Coast Highway at Corral Beach — Malibu Seafood — is on the city council agenda next Tuesday.

The common practice of pedestrians scrambling across the highway next to the beach has prompted city plans to build the underpass.

And this underpass of course would be right next to an existing underpass for Latigo Creek. But that underpass is often choked with sand and dirt, and it leads straight to the ocean.

As Malibu residents know too well, the beach at the side of the highway beckons to thousands of beachgoers all summer. Traffic flows through there in excess of the 50 mile per hour speed limit. There is no shoulder on much of the road. People unpack kids and beach gear in traffic lanes, and the freeway-style lane configuration has not changed in 70 years.

Rather than slow down traffic, or provide pathways alongside the highway to walk, or heaven forbid install a pedestrian crossing signal, the city is going to spend around three million dollars on a pedestrian underpass.

Cities around the world, confronted with similar pedestrian dangers, have installed similar pedestrian underpasses. And invariably, they have also installed fences or spiky plants down the middle of their beachfront highways, to prevent people from scrambling through traffic anyway.

Los Angeles built dozens of pedestrian underpasses near schools decades ago. They became stinky magnets for vandals, and have been fenced off or sealed up.

Malibu will repeat this exercise — perhaps an exercise in futility — if the city council approves the underpass as expected this Tuesday.