PCH Roundabouts Plan Returns to City Council Monday

The controversial roundabout and road narrowing plan for Pacific Coast Highway in western Malibu goes before the Malibu City Council Monday night.

The proposal is to reduce the highway to one lane in each direction, impose a 35 mile an hour speed limit where the speed limit is now 55, and add two roundabouts just west of the western intersection of Broad Beach Road.

It is a radical plan to dramatically slow down traffic in a city where the trauma of four pedestrians mowed down in freeway-like conditions may be fading.

People who live near the proposed roundabouts say they are overkill, and at the wrong end of town.

The city council has voted once to approve the concept of roundabouts, but at the same time it voted to reopen the issue if this is the right project at the right place.

Monday night, it will vote on whether the western Malibu project has met the legal threshold to go ahead. But the city council and Caltrans may independently choose to alter the project.

That's a policy decision. Monday night the city council will act as a quasi-judicial body to decide if evidence supports the required findings for the project's approval. The city council, at a future meeting, could choose not to fund or move forward with the project.

Such is how decisions are made in this city.