[An article about a new acting city manager being hired by Malibu, the present interim city manager resigning, and the city council meeting being cancelled due to a bad sound system, has been published separately.  Click here:  https://www.radiomalibu.net/toney_out_former_ambassador_in/]

Caltans Firm On Bike Lanes, Wants 19 More Slices Of Private Land For PCH Projects – Traffic Circles May Be Coming in 2028 or ’29

There were more surprises from Caltrans at yesterday’s public forum on Pacific Coast Highway traffic safety programs.

Yesterday … state highway engineers announced that they would need additional right of way … additional land to be purchased alongside the highway.

The land will be seized at 19 specific locations between the Malibu Pier and Santa Monica.

The state says the land is needed for drainage … and some of it may be needed only temporarily … during construction.

During the meeting … the KBUU News reporter asked exactly where the roadway land purchases will need to be made.

That question was ignored … the state later said they would get back to us.

The state also said a sidewalk would be constructed along PCH near Malibu Lagoon … apparently obliterating a dirt strip where surfers have been parking near Surfrider Beach for decades.

At yesterday’s public hearing … more pleas from Malibu residents to drop bike lanes proposed for PCH.

Like this La Costa Beach resident … named Joan Zallapa [phonetic].

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“Bikes?

“I  mean, I have seen people wiped out with – not only by cars – on bikes, but also buy car doors on bikes.

“And not everybody that lives on PCH uses a garage.

“Usually the garages are just for one car and due to the space allowed … and you have to like myself park on PCH.”

Another eastern Malibu resident … Dee Neels … was more emphatic.

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“On the one hand, it’s a highway…

“And there are people living in Malibu who commute to Santa Monica Century City, downtown.

“And we have people who live in Los Angeles and work in Malibu and come up here, and they use PCH as a highway.

“I question bikes on the road simply because that’s recreation.

“I enjoy recreation, but I would not think of biking along a highway.”

Caltrans project manager Ryan Snyder listened … took a deep breath … and repeated what he has said at seen earlier public meetings in Malibu.

Bike lanes are coming to eastern Malibu … next year.

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“The bike lanes are necessary for people who use bicycles.

“And again, we have a lot of people who said yes we absolutely have to do something about bicycles.

“And we also have a new state law that requires us to put some bicycle facilities on the highway. So our hands are a bit tied with that.”

And the Caltrans engineer added that protected bike lane … a separate …

protected reason all those garages

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“We are into going to blocking any driveways or homes with bike lanes … so I just wanna make sure we’re clear on that.”

Other new major changes .. still coming to the highway … still in the Caltrans pipeline.

The new crosswalk over eight lanes of traffic … at PCH and Entrada … still in the plans.

A new left turn signal coming out of the freeway tunnel … into the city of Santa Monica’s big parking lot … just north of the McClure Tunnel …. still in the plans.

But a major chunk of proposed bike lane has been eliminated.

This would be on westbound PCH next to the two burned out mobile home parks… down at PCH at Temescal Canyon Road…

That has been been eliminated from the westbound side.

There are chronic landslides that keep eating up the inland side of the highway.

The landslides have already squeezed the traffic over towards the ocean.

And Caltrans has given up on the concept of a bike lane down there.

Instead… bicyclists will be directed to share the lane with PCH traffic right where the road narrows from three lanes with a shoulder … to two lanes and no shoulder.

Sounds safe.

And that led to another big surprise from Caltrans yesterday.

The state has identified funding sources to implement some of the long-term proposals on a much shorter time frame than originally disclosed to Malibu.

Things like the seven traffic circles planned from Webb Way West to the county line may be coming as early as 2028 or 2029.

But there is already funding for the new bike lane configuration on PCH in eastern Malibu … with construction scheduled to begin very soon.

And that led City Council member Haylynn Conrad to ask why this is not going before the Malibu city Council.

The ever agreeable Caltrans official agreed to present the proposal to the city council.

But not for a vote.  The Caltrans design will go before the city council for a review …

But he did not say Malibu’s city council will be given any authority to vote.

The state owns the highway… and Caltrans has repeatedly stated … it’s the Caltrans district director in Los Angeles who will make the final decision on what Malibu’s main street will look like.

Unless …

The Caltrans engineer Monday said there is one way for Malibu to take over the authority to make the decision on how bike lanes will be handled … how PCH will be rebuilt.

And that would be … if Malibu voters passed a self-imposed tax … and paid for the project … instead of the state.

The cost estimate?  Up to 268 million dollars.

First $1 Million For Malibu-Area Fire Fuel Modifications Goes Out To Ventura County Fire

Last January … the Los Angeles Times reported that Calfire decided against funding fire reduction projects in the Malibu area … and instead directed the money to projects in more rural parts of the state.

Records reviewed by The L-A Times show Cal Fire turned down more than $3.8 million in wildfire prevention grants for the Malibu area over the last four years.

Instead … the state’s limited fire prevention money went to projects in northern California … where Calfire does the firefighting … not the local county fire departments like LA and Ventura.

Now … after the Palisades Fire … the governor is dumping money into fire prevention in the Santa Monica Mountains.

Last night … the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy granted one million dollars to the Ventura County Fire Department for fire projects in the hills just north and west of Malibu.

Fire chief Jack Cook spoke at the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy board meeting last night … at King Gillette Ranch.

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“When we come into areas we just don’t do clearcutting and make it visible to scar the land. We do a lot of mastication work. We do shaded fuel brakes. We do things that slow fire spread in the event of the fire. We try to keep it on ridge systems, but also, so it’s not an order of the community.

“We understand our people or professionals understand how to do this and how to mitigate things without again like I said, scarring up the land.”

The end result … the fire chief says … is a fire break that does not look like a big gash up the mountain.

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“A lot of these areas people think ‘why don’t we just put heavy equipment up there?’

“That is disruptive to the it’s disruptive to the land.

“We have many other methods that we use including goats now we have a very, very robust goat program in Ventura county and I will tell you it works fantastic, but we bring them into certain areas we fence off the areas and we allow the goats to go to work and you be surprised at the work they doing seven days.”

All the goats need is a temporary fence.

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“They know exactly what they are doing. They are better than all of us.

“They can figure out how to survive out there, and they  know what to eat and what not to eat.

“They are very good out there at maintaining the lands.”

Ventura County Fire Chief Jack Cook says the one million dollars in fire reduction projects will be used for covered fire breaks along canyon roads and mountain ridges near Deer Creek Road .. west of Malibu.

Company Used By Malibu Blamed For False Alarms That Panicked All Of LA County Last January

More than 40 different companies in the United States have cropped up to provide emergency alerts to the public … on behalf of public agencies.

And one of them … used by Malibu and by Los Angeles County … sent out false and misleading alarms during the Palisades Fire.

A Congressman from Southern LA County says the federal government needs to crack down.

Congressman Robert Garcia is pointing the finger at Genasys … spelled GENASYS.

Genasys is the software company hired by Malibu and L-A County to issue wireless emergency alerts … the alarms to go off in every cellphone within a map boundary set by the alerting agency.

During the big fire … multiple echo alerts went out all across L A County … warning people to evacuate immediately.

And two days after the main fire hit Malibu … LA County tried to warn the Monte Nido neighborhood up in Malibu Canyon to evacuate.

The text-like message was sent to the cellphones of residents throughout Los Angeles County on Jan. 9.

The whole county.

It was a scary message … garther your loved ones and important papers and pets … and leave immediately.

The Pacific Palisades had just burnt down two days earlier… And people were terrified by the false alarm.

The congressman says the problem of bad software… Coming from 40 different vendors… And poor training needs to be examined.

In Malibu… The problem is amplified by contradictory and repeated emergency messages coming from several government agencies, and the Southern California Edison company…

The power company has already acknowledged that its messaging system broke down in January… And in the month leading up to last, January had confused people with contradictory and repeated messages.

With the sheriffs office… The office of emergency management at LA county… The city and the fire department all sending out messages … sometimes contradictory… the problem is real.

And what we at KBUU have noticed is that centralizing the message procedure … with one agency … actually makes the problem worse.

That means local officials. … who know exactly what the problems are … and local news media … who know exactly how to convey the information … are left way down the food chain.

The congressman says the software error has been fixed.

But additional funding and oversight of the wireless-alert system is needed to prevent it from occurring again.