Cameras from houses on Pacific Coast Highway captured the crash that closed the road Thursday night.

But the man who caused the crash …still on the loose.

A car heading towards Los Angeles passed traffic that was going 55 or 60 miles per hour … in the 45 zone … according to one of the drivers who was passed … 

NEWSCART B70012 EDDIE BRAUN

“I ws gong 55 or 60 and the guy passed me at at least 100 miles per hour.  He crashed and as I attempted to aid him, the guy took off.”

Eddie Braun .. the driver going 60 in the 45 zone .. in an interview aired by KTLA channel 5. 

The issue of PCH will boil over at the city council meeting tonight.

Niamh Rolston, 20, Peyton Stewart, 21, Asha Weir, 21, and Deslyn Williams, 21, were brutally killed by a speeding driver while standing outside their sorority house 11 weeks ago.

Caltrans has done almost nothing other than make plans and say they cannot lower the speed limit. 

That … and some trailers to tell drivers how fast they are going. 

City council member Bruce Silverstein calls the Caltrans efforts so far … “putting lipstick on a pig.”

As KBUU News has been reporting … the state has had almost three months to make changes on the roadway …  but has made no changes to the design of the highway.

83 days have passed since Niamh Rolston, Peyton Stewart, Asha Weir, and Deslyn Williams were run down and killed Malibu’s Main Street. 

There are lots more sheriff’s deputies on the highway … as well as one squad of four CHP units.

But on the Caltrans front … essentially nothing has changed … other than the placement of more than a dozen speed radar trailers on the highway.

Caltrans says its promised its new comprehensive safety audits have been completed only on 2 and a half miles of PCH … which is 33 miles long in and near Malibu. 

Caltrans has been unable to come up with a way to lower the speed limits. 

Its chief safety officer says the average speed on PCH in eastern Malibu .. where the four women was killed …. is too fast to lower the speed limit. 

The speed limit is 45 … the 85th percentile speed is above 55 … and the California speed trap law does not allow Caltrans to unilaterally drop the speed limit.

Unilateral action is exactly what is needed … says city council member Bruce Silverstein.

Tonight .. he will again ask the city council to drop that 45 mile an hour speed limit .. maybe to as low as 25 miles an hour. 

Silverstein and Steve Uhring made similar requests last December … but three other council members said they wanted to see what Caltrans would come up with first.

Caltrans has come up with nothing. 

Any objective review shows that the state is conducting business as usual … moving at a bureaucratic pace when they promised to cut red tape and act quickly. 

Silverstein wants lanes closed with barriers … lowered speed limits … maybe even speed bumps not he state highway. 

No other state highway has speed bumps … or a city speed limit imposed on the state property.

California law clearly makes PCH state property … and Caltrans is placed squarely in charges of it.

Silerstein says … let the state sue Malibu … that should be interesting. 

Safety advocates … meanwhile … are advocating for CalTrans needs to immediately reduce the speed limit along the 21 miles of PCH.

They need to install quick-build traffic calming measures to protect pedestrians and cyclists on this road.

Immediately.

And for a long-term solution, CalTrans needs to provide a comprehensive proposal on how to make all sections of PCH safer for drivers, pedestrians, and cyclists.

Michel Shane … who lost his little girl to PCH 14 years ago … wants to see an exact timeline for implementation and a start date for construction that is no longer than 1 year from now.

Let’s get back to that driver going 60 in the 45 zone. 

60 is just about the average nighttime speed on the straightaways in eastern malibu … including where last Thursday’s fiery crash took out 4 vehicles.

Traffic in a 45 zone will go 60 is the road is deigned to accommodate such speeds.

And PCH is.

But speed is a central factor in a quarter of all fatal crashes. 

As speed limits go up … speeds go up more … and so do fatalities. 

Researchers from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety found that a 5 mph increase in the maximum speed limit is associated with an 8% increase in the fatality rates. 

Vehicle speed at the time of impact is directly correlated to whether a person will live or die. 

A person hit by a car traveling at 35 miles per hour is five times more likely to die than a person hit by a car traveling at 20 miles per hour.

The PCH items is on the city council agenda for tonight … one of several major controversial items.

More on that coming up.

Also tonight … the city council is going to sign a contract for a 1.3 million dollar project to rebuild about three miles of PCH from Pepperdine to Cher’s House. 

That road was built in 1946 with a 65 mile per hour design speed.

The city want to narrow the center median and provide more room at the side of the traffic lanes … for bicyclists and pedestrians.

 

City Lending Speed Guns To CHP Officers on PCH Patrol 

And if all that is not enough … what can be more worthless than traffic cops without traffic speed guns???

The Malibu city council tonight will review a one-time appropriation to buy more speed cameras for cops.

With great fanfare … the city council is spending local taxpayer money to bring in the California highway patrol to supplement speed enforcement efforts by the LA County sheriffs office on Pacific Coast Highway.

The patrols began last weekend… And it turns out there was one small problem. The highway patrol does not have enough speed guns to use on PCH.

The high tech guns actually use LIDAR … a type of radar that uses light waves … 

And they take a picture.

Tthe highway patrol has been borrowing LIDAR guns from the sheriff’s office to patorl PCH.

The city manager has written a check to buy four additional LIDAR guns for the sheriff to share with the Highway patrol.

That’s 28 thousand dollars.

 

Farmers Market May Get Absorbed By City

Where was the Malibu Farmers Market yesterday???

Cancelled due to high winds.

Where will the Farmers Market be next week?

An open question. 

And very much a political hot potato. 

Tonight … the Malibu city council will decide what to do about Debra Bianco and her Cornucopia Foundation … which has been running Malibu’s Farmers Market for 20 years or more. 

Bianco has been fighting city moves to get the market out of Bluffs Park … 

The park has been its temporary home while a college campus was being built at the county-owned parking lot that has been home to the market for decades.

The construction is wrapped up … and the temporary permission for the market to be in the street next to the park has expired.

The Farmers Market has grown into the adjacent  Park property … which is owned by the city under a deal it cut with developer Jerry Perenchio to buy several valuable Malibu properties for a bargain 25 million dollars.

But there were strings attached … the Perenchio estate is holding firm on a deed restriction … a formal ban on commercial activities in the park … forever.  

Bianco says in a statement that her nonprofit has insurance to Bianco to protect the city from any liability.  But no insurance policy can cover the threat of a lawsuit by the Perenchio estate to take back the land if the city allows a commercial project to operate on it.

Malibu taxpayers have invested more than 35 million dollars on Legacy Park and on its water treatment lagoon and purification system.

And the city attorney worries that the 35 million dollar investment is in danger if the Farmers market is not evicted from the park immediately.

The city has been slapping fines on the Farmers Market since October.

And some city council members say Debra Bianco is getting complaints from vendors.

The city manager says Bianco has been noncommunicative as her organization has been violating city rules.

It’s not clear if the city council has any legal authority to rescind the fines.

 

Elementary Schools Back In Session Today, Schools On Morning View Back Tuesday

Malibu’s two elementary Schools go back into session today.

The middle school and high school have a teacher training day today … their classes resume tomorrow.

With LAUSD schools also going back into session today l… you can expect heavier rush hour traffic on PCH starting today.

 

SCE Called On To Explain Terrible Service Record By City Council Tonight

Southern Calikdfornia Edison is scheduled to give an update to Malib tonight … on the electric power situation.

Edison has had enormous difficulty keeping the lights on in Malibu.

Taken as a whole … the city has outages at more than 2 and a half times longer than the Edison system wide average.

Some area of Malibu … like the troublesome Cuithbert Circuit at paradise Cove and Point Dume …. Have far worse reliability rates.

Edison has a distribution system that was designed int he 1950s …. And has not really been reinforced against Santa Ana winds. 

That means the power company has been either cutting off the power … or threatening to cut off the power … if sustained winds get near 20 miles an hour. 

And that happens all the time. 

Southern California Edison goes to explain what is happening in Malibu tonight at the city council meeting.