Mayor Bass Hears Canyon Traffic Concerns

At a Mar. 25 meeting of the Rebuild Coalition of Pacific Palisades community organizations, Canyon Alliance director Doug Suisman conversed with L.A. Mayor Karen Bass about the spillover traffic impacts on the Canyon due to the Palisades recovery checkpoints and reconstruction vehicles.

The meeting, which took place at Snapchat headquarters in Santa Monica, was the coalition’s fifth in a series organized by Palisades leader Maryam Zar, and was attended by Mayor Bass and her leadership team, Councilwoman Traci Park, rebuild leader Steve Soboroff, and representatives of nearly all elected officials and city departments serving the Palisades and the Canyon, Suisman said. There were approximately 60 community representatives and officials in attendance, including SMCCA Board Member Julie Silliman.

“Mayor Bass, the Canyon, despite our Santa Monica name, is part of the Palisades and part of Los Angeles,” Suisman reported saying to the Mayor. “We’re a historic community, which preceded the Palisades and even the city of Santa Monica. We are small and sometimes overlooked, but we’re located at a critical location for the Palisades reconstruction. We were incredibly fortunate and were mostly spared by the flames. We’re in recovery and are repopulating. Because of that we want to serve as a gateway and a gathering place for our friends, families, and neighbors in the Palisades.”

Suisman said he went on to describe the impacts of the checkpoints, particularly at Chautauqua and Brooktree.

“Long delays at these checkpoints are causing drivers to seek alternate routes through our Canyon neighborhood streets, which are too narrow and winding to handle large numbers of oversized construction vehicles,”  Suisman said he told the mayor. “Gridlock has become common. Students and teachers at Canyon School are often arriving 45 minutes late. Canyon businesses, which have just reopened, are hurting from the traffic. And the situation has escalated from merely inconvenient to dangerous, as clogged hilly streets become impassable for emergency vehicles.”

Suisman also said he asked Bass to have city departments work directly with the Cal. Department of Transportation (Caltrans), which oversees Pacific Coast Highway, to develop a Transportation Management Plan (TMP) to immediately address checkpoint delays as well as the challenges of reconstruction over the next 3-5 years.

“The Canyon wants to support the Palisades recovery in every way we can,” Suisman said he told the mayor. “We also need the city’s help in managing chaotic reconstruction traffic.”

Suisman said he concluded by saying that he would be happy to tell Canyon residents that “perhaps for the first time in the community’s 200-year history, the Canyon had the ear of the mayor of Los Angeles, and Mayor Bass smiled and replied, 'You will always have my ear.’”

The upshot was the mayor’s endorsement of the proposal by State Sen. Ben Allen that the longstanding Pacific Coast Highway Task Force create a subgroup to specifically focus on the chokepoint at Chautauqua and other areas of the Canyon, Suisman said. L.A. Deputy Mayor of Infrastructure Randall Winston noted that he would alert further city departments of this development. The task force already includes key transportation and law enforcement representatives from the state and the cities of Los Angeles and Santa Monica. The next task force meeting is scheduled for today, and Maryam Zar asked Suisman to join as the community’s representative for ongoing traffic discussions.

In other developments at the meeting, Mayor Bass appealed to all Palisades and Canyon residents with properties damaged by the fire to either opt in or opt out of the ROE (“Right of Entry”) for the Army Corps of Engineers to clear the property (see related story and link), Suisman said. The deadline for responding is March 31, and a failure to respond could result in a declaration of “nuisance” on the property, financial penalties, and the assignment of a clearance contractor at the owner’s expense. She asked all the organizations present to alert their impacted neighbors of the deadline and urge them to respond.

Suisman said that other meeting announcements included:

⁃             The Army Corps of Engineer’s Colonel Nate Weander reported on accelerating progress of lot clearance for fire damaged properties in the Palisades, with 35 homes being cleared each day. The pace yields as many as 850 truck trips per day, a number that is expected to increase to 1,000 as clearance work progresses. Substantial completion of the work is now projected at 5-6 months instead of the original 18 months,

⁃             The Mayor reported on the city’s commitment to undergrounding utilities, but said that the greatest challenge will be funding; the $2.5 billion committed by Governor Newsom was expected to help, but most of it will go to fund state agencies rather than the city.

⁃             Councilwoman Traci Park and her Planning Deputy Craig Bullock reported on her efforts to create a Climate Resilience District for the Palisades (and Canyon), which would allow the raising of major rebuilding funds that could partially support undergrounding, through tax increment financing.

⁃             Steve Soboroff reported that the lease has been signed for the Sears Building in downtown Santa Monica, which will allow Palisades Charter High School students to return to in-person classes in the near future.

⁃             Tracy Quinn, Director of Heal the Bay, and a member of the city’s new Blue Ribbon Commission on Climate Action and Fire Safety Recovery, reported on initial plans to address major post-fire concerns about air, water, and soil safety through a comprehensive testing program.

⁃             The community was introduced to the leadership team of Haggerty, the Chicago-based disaster recovery specialists hired by the city to help coordinate and expedite recovery and reconstruction efforts in the Palisades.

⁃             Team Palisades, a community organization, reported on progress in organizing a communications system to reach all residents of the Palisades through a network of block captains.

Doug Suisman speaks about Canyon traffic issues at multi-agency meeting.