The Publisher’s Notebook

Time for Overtime on Malibu’s Mountain Speedways

BY ANNE SOBLE

It’s summer, and as has been evident in letters in the last few weeks’ issues of The News, it’s not just the temperature that’s rising. Canyon residents are getting angrier and angrier at the lack of teeth in the much-touted Operation Safe Canyons project to slow down motorcycles and high performance vehicles on routes from the Malibu mountains to the sea. Last weekend, there were a half dozen complaints on the office voice mail, and I even received a call at home from someone who said they had just called the California Highway Patrol about speeders. There were apparently other callers, and more pleas went to the Lost Hills Sheriff’s Station. Critics charge that every time Los Angeles County officials and public safety agency representatives get together for an Operation Safe Canyons press conference, those who flaunt the laws have a hearty laugh and say, “Isn’t it great that they are making the canyons safe for us to run rampant?”

According to the callers and the writers of the letters already printed and those yet to be published, this past weekend may have been one of the worst they have ever seen. One motorist who had stopped Sunday so blind youth exiting a yellow school bus could cross the road to attend one of the major events of the year at the Camp for the Junior Blind said bikers stopped behind him kept revving their engines and making derogatory remarks. When vehicles were able to proceed past the camp, he said he was quadruple-passed by the motorcyclists at 20-plus miles over the speed limit. It would appear that the time has come to start pressuring elected officials to do more than provide photo ops and sound bites. Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky is supposed to represent the voters of unincorporated Malibu. It is reported that he was able to use his considerable clout this week to persuade the California Coastal Commission to pass a measure that some of his constituents wanted. Perhaps his power extends to the head of the California Highway Patrol and the Los Angeles County Sheriff. Operation Safe Canyons’ next press conference should be held on a weekend afternoon instead of the usual weekday morning. It might take a little inconvenience to convince these folks that their rhetoric misses the mark. Until then, they appear clueless, as well as ineffectual, about traffic law enforcement on Malibu’s mountain roads.