City revives plan to fix Malibu's crashiest intersections Play

The Malibu public works and public safety commissions Wednesday held a joint session to pick apart the city's planned traffic lane changes at Malibu's crashiest intersections.

That would be the twin traffic lights at Las Flores Canyon Road and Rambla Pacifico, down near Duke's restaurant.

The city is drawing up precise blueprints to reduce the mishmash of way-too-short left turn lanes on PCH at those two intersections. That area has the highest crash rate in all of Malibu.

Those two intersections are so close to each other that the left turn lanes bump into each other. They are too short for cars in either direction to get out of the way of through traffic.

The city plan is to eliminate one of the two turn lanes — the one that goes from westbound PCH into the gas station at Rambla Pacifico. That plan came up before the city a few years ago but was rejected because people were afraid of rear-end crashes by drivers making illegal left turns and stopping in the straight-ahead lanes.

The plan is back, backed by a promise of strict enforcement of the no-left-turn rule into the gas station.