Girding for gridlock

To drive along the winding canyon roads of Los Angeles just west of Santa Monica is to glimpse neighborhoods that are in the city but not of the city -- at least not the realm of asphalt and grit known to most Angelenos.

Instead of mini-malls and graffiti, there is a collage of funky and fancy houses inhabited by a diverse bunch -- tattooed bikers, retirees, artists, lawyers and screenwriters. They revel in their proximity to the beach and the occasional flash of surf glancing through the trees. And they stand united in their distress over a harsh reality of canyon life: traffic.

Santa Monica Canyon, their closely knit enclave, is already a favored commuter cut-through, and it’s poised to become even more congested, residents say. Starting in the spring, Santa Monica plans back-to-back projects to shore up the shaky bluffs of Palisades Park and to close and rebuild the heavily traveled California Incline connecting Ocean Avenue to Pacific Coast Highway.

Anticipated to run through 2010, the projects will require the shutdown of portions of PCH and the rerouting of massive amounts of traffic. Residents of the canyon and other portions of Pacific Palisades -- and even of Malibu farther west -- wail that the construction will send waves of frustrated commuters, including many from the San Fernando Valley who use PCH, into their narrow and sometimes treacherous streets.

In particular, the looming shutdown of the incline, used by an average of 15,000 vehicles a day, has sparked fears of epic backups and frayed nerves.

Despite its Santa Monica 90402 ZIP Code, Santa Monica Canyon lies within Pacific Palisades, a high-end district of Los Angeles with a central village along Sunset Boulevard. Residents anticipate that small local arteries such as West Channel Road and Entrada Drive will become clogged with vehicles heading for 7th Street in Santa Monica. Palisadians in adjacent Rustic Canyon and closer to the village center fear that commuters will also back up key thoroughfares such as Temescal Canyon Road and Sunset.

“The disastrous congestion caused by the closure of the California Incline will be felt by tens of thousands of commuters and residents far beyond Santa Monica,” said Richard G. Cohen, vice chairman of the Pacific Palisades Community Council. While Santa Monica stands to reap the benefits of the projects, he added, residents of the Palisades, Malibu and beyond will bear most of the cost in terms of travel delays.

Although that view gaining ground, Santa Monica officials find themselves facing off with L.A. City Councilman Bill Rosendahl, the Los Angeles Department of Transportation and riled-up neighbors.

“It appears the strategy of Santa Monica is to shift the traffic into the canyon,” said Doug Suisman, an urban designer whose narrow Santa Monica Canyon street already serves as a commuter route. “My position would be that’s an unacceptable strategy.”

In a July letter to Santa Monica City Manager Lamont Ewell, Rosendahl said traffic planning was not “moving quickly or thoughtfully enough.” He added that Los Angeles traffic officials were concerned that the projects would end up taking more time than Santa Monica figured and cause much more than the minimal traffic disruptions predicted by traffic consultants.

Spurred by Rosendahl’s and residents’ complaints, Santa Monica officials earlier this month began meeting with Los Angeles traffic and public works officials.

No one disputes that the projects, expected to cost a total of about $20 million, are necessary.

Over the decades, weathering, ground seepage, tremors and animal burrows -- not to mention construction and maintenance of Pacific Coast Highway -- have cracked and eroded the ancient alluvial deposits that make up the 1.6 miles of bluffs underlying Palisades Park. After the 1994 Northridge earthquake triggered a sizable slide, Santa Monica officials sought federal funding to design and implement a project to stabilize the near-vertical slopes.

Meanwhile, the incline, technically a bridge, is considered structurally deficient and qualifies for replacement under a federal program that has gained attention since the deadly Aug. 1 collapse of a Minneapolis bridge. Crumbling concrete, exposed rebar, chipped railings and potholes attest to the deterioration. Underneath, portions of the bluffs have given way, revealing the bridge’s increasingly fragile underpinnings.

According to the draft environmental impact report, the incline has remained almost unchanged since about 1940.

By California Department of Transportation sufficiency standards, “the incline is the worst it can be,” said Craig Perkins, Santa Monica’s director of environmental and public works management.

Santa Monica was pretty much a blank slate when state Sen. John P. Jones and Col. Robert S. Baker began laying out the town site in 1874 and auctioning off pieces of what had been the San Vicente and Santa Monica ranchos.

Nearly 20 years later, Palisades Park became the city’s first designated public open space after Jones and Baker donated the strip of land from the Santa Monica Pier to Montana Avenue on the condition that it be used forever as a park. The Santa Monica Land & Water Co. later donated the bluff-top property from Montana Avenue to the city limit, creating an unusual lengthwise park.

Over the years, the slender, 26-acre space has attracted hordes of tourists, locals and transients who enjoy gentle ocean breezes and magnificent sunsets. It has grown narrower as wind and rain have eroded the bluffs and as chunks of parkland have been dislodged by groundwater or tremors and tumbled to Pacific Coast Highway.

Years ago, Santa Monica moved pathways in from the bluffs’ edges by several feet. Visible beyond the relocated fences are remnants of asphalt paths, with huge chunks missing where pieces of hillside have given way.

Within the park, paved and unpaved pathways wind among the eucalyptus, oak and palm trees. Among the fixtures are a 1930s statue of St. Monica, benches, a totem pole and various memorials.

Engineering drawings from 1905 show that the incline, originally called Linda Vista Drive, was envisioned as part of what was then Linda Vista Park. Vintage postcards show women in long dresses, dusters and straw hats sharing the road with early automobiles.

The three-lane incline remains the only road that cuts through the park, which was recently declared a city landmark and is eligible for the National Register of Historic Places.

Santa Monica Canyon, just to the west, was subdivided in 1912 as the horse-and-buggy era was ending. “It’s a Model T subdivision,” with narrow roads to match, said Randy Young, a local historian and longtime Rustic Canyon resident.

Originally designed as a getaway for wealthy people, Santa Monica Canyon evolved into a community of artists, aircraft workers and entrepreneurs. The area attracted the likes of Mae West, Greta Garbo, photographer Edward Weston and writer Christopher Isherwood. Still popular with creative types, canyon dwellings sell for $1 million and up -- way up.

“Every day the traffic backs up . . . between the hours of 4 and 7 p.m.,” Young said. “This is not just chichi people whining. There is a true major problem.”

First on Santa Monica’s agenda would be the bluffs improvement project, starting in April. Perkins said that would entail closing off the lane of PCH nearest the bluffs in 1,000-foot sections so that workers could install drainage pipes and horizontal soil “nail” pipes, which are made of steel and are held in place with grout.

In addition, pinnacles that appear ready to topple would be cut. And a few eroded gullies that cannot be seen from PCH would be sprayed with chemical grouting that would sink into the surface and solidify. In some areas, native coastal bluff scrub vegetation would replace eucalyptus trees and other plants that have destabilized the bluffs.

That project would be completed in July 2009, according to city projections. A few months later, the incline would close and workers would begin the process of demolishing and replacing it with a slightly wider roadway. Santa Monica engineers expect that project to last about a year.

But Palisadians fear it could take much longer. Among other suggestions, they say Santa Monica should fast-track the project by working around the clock and offering incentive bonuses for early completion.

Tomas Carranza, an engineer with the Los Angeles Department of Transportation, said Los Angeles wants Caltrans and Santa Monica to synchronize traffic lights and post signs directing tourists away from the canyons.

Malibu Mayor Jeff Jennings said he backs a region-wide approach. “We’re just hoping,” he said, “that Santa Monica and Caltrans and every other jurisdiction involved will recognize how much of a serious problem this is going to cause.”

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martha.groves@latimes.com