Celebrities, sunsets and car wrecks: Some look to the ocean to fix deadly Malibu highway

CNN

4 days ago

Michel Shane seems to have a life to be desired. He's produced blockbuster films like 'Catch Me If You Can' and 'I, Robot.' He lives in a canyon home high above the Pacific Ocean and cruises around tony Malibu in a Porsche SUV.
His curly white hair is big and bold — right out of central casting, you might say, for a Hollywood producer.
We meet Shane not far from his home, on a bluff overlooking Pacific Coast Highway, the ocean waters shimmering peacefully under the warm yet breezy California skies. As he looks off in the distance, he could see the route he took that one Spring Break afternoon in 2010 — a drive leading to Emily Shane Way, a road now named for his daughter and a tangible reminder that his Malibu lifestyle can't possibly fill the hole in his heart.
'My daughter didn't graduate. She doesn't have a career. She doesn't have a husband. She doesn't have friends,' Shane said.
Emily's death at the age of 13 on PCH, as it's known locally, changed everything for Shane, making him not just a grieving father but an activist determined to make life safer for others. First, he focused on the state of the road. Now, he's part of an effort that's going further, blending road safety with fire recovery and celebrating the beauty of this corner of California.
Fifteen years later, he can still remember exactly what happened. Shane was on his way to pick up Emily from a sleepover. He had reached the bottom of this bluff, waiting to turn right, when he noticed a car racing down PCH, weaving in and out of traffic.
'I said, 'Boy, this guy is nuts,'' Shane recalled, later learning other motorists had already called 911 to report the erratic driver, in his mid-20s, behind the wheel of a Mitsubishi Lancer.
When Shane reached the pick-up point he'd set with Emily, authorities had already started blocking off the area. Emily, standing on a sidewalk, had been struck by the same out-of-control driver Shane had seen moments before.
'She had a headset on, she turned to see what was going on and he hit her right on,' Shane said. 'She went 10 feet in the air, hit a sign and by the time she hit the ground, she was basically brain dead.'
Emily was still in the ambulance, waiting to be airlifted to a hospital, when paramedics emerged with the worst news — Emily had died.
'I often say I was one person on April 3rd at 5:59, and I was another person at 6 o'clock,' he said.
Before that clock struck 6, Shane says he had always dismissed the dangers of PCH like so many others.
'Oh, it's dangerous but that's the road and we got to live with it,' he recalls of his attitude back then.
But after losing Emily, Shane made it his personal mission to honor her by making the highway safer. He made a documentary on the dangers of PCH and started the Emily Shane Foundation with his wife, Ellen, to honor Emily's giving nature.
'My wife had to carry snack bars with her,' Shane reminisced. 'If (Emily) saw a homeless person, she had to give them one because she just didn't want anyone to be in distress.'
But still, people continued to die on Malibu's 21-mile stretch of PCH at an alarming rate. Four Pepperdine University seniors were killed by a speeding car that careened into them as they walked to an off-campus mixer — renewing outrage and leading to the creation of a permanent memorial in 2023. White tires bear the names of the dead, along with a sign revealing the sad reality: '61 killed since 2010,' and 'Fix PCH.'
PCH is the beating heart of Malibu — a town without a center. The four-lane highway serves as a parking lot for the beach, a de facto Main Street and the way out of town for drivers cruising the coastline.
That mix is what makes it so dangerous.
Some progress has been made. The state instituted speed reductions and crosswalk improvements — part of an ongoing plan to make the road safer — while new laws have allowed for speed cameras to come to Malibu as early as this year.
But now, Shane has a new worry for PCH drivers: Malibu's recovery from the Palisades fire that ravaged Los Angeles.
Hundreds of homes and businesses were destroyed by the raging flames — all wedged into a razor-thin strip of land between the ocean and the highway. Removing the rubble had already shut down PCH for months and crippled local businesses, but a rebuild would likely shrink PCH again as heavy equipment navigates the claustrophobic stretch of land.
Add an influx of tourists to the Los Angeles area for three upcoming global events — the World Cup in 2026, the Super Bowl in 2027, and the Olympics in 2028 — and Shane fears the road could become a death trap for those seeking Malibu's famed surf, sand and sun.
And for all his attention on the highway, which doubles as a parking lot for the shore and can be bumper-to-bumper or driven at racetrack speeds, Shane thinks the answer could lie away from the land.
'We look out … and there's no one on the ocean,' Shane said as he peered off that bluff above PCH. 'Why is it so terrible that we can't have boats?'
The 'Blue Highway,' as Shane and others call it, is gaining traction as a transportation option to shuttle tourists and locals alike on ferry boats between compact Malibu and the sprawling Los Angeles attractions to the south.
'We should be spending more time on the ocean and less time in our cars,' said Patricia Keeney Maischoss, who heads a group called 'Pier to Pier' that expects to launch ferry service soon from Malibu to Santa Monica and Marina Del Rey, which is five miles north of Los Angeles International Airport.
'Pier to Pier' is in advanced talks with Hornblower Group, a national ferry operator, Maischoss said, and could expand to other carriers. It's waiting on 'minor modifications' to be approved for the Santa Monica Pier and then boats can be running 'in 45 days,' Maischoss said of the service, which relies on private funding.
Santa Monica — with its world-famous pier — is a key tourist draw and like Malibu, sits along the Pacific Coast Highway. Maischoss says getting tourists out of their cars in Santa Monica and onto the ferries is vital to ease the choke point heading into Malibu.
'We've got 700 homes to build on that highway,' said Maischoss, also a Malibu resident. 'It cuts us off from not only tourism, but affects our residents and the ability to even live there and commute and bring workers in.'
Maischoss sees another use for the ferries: fire rescue. Malibu has ocean on one side and mountains on the other, it's squeezed into a narrow strip of land with exit routes easily cut off in a disaster.
With the effects of human-induced climate change, wildfires in California are growing more intense and are no longer burning just during the hot summer months. The Palisades Fire, part of the January firestorm that rampaged through Malibu, is the costliest inferno in Los Angeles County's history.
During that blaze, roads in the Pacific Palisades just to the south of Malibu were so clogged that dozens of drivers were forced to abandon their cars and run as the fire bore down on them. Dan Salas, CEO of Harbor Breeze Cruises, which is in talks to join the ferry service in the future, says the water should factor into any evacuation plan.
'It's incredibly doable,' Salas said. 'Get there to the pier, get tied up along the pier and then get the people safely during an emergency.'
Salas says it's shocking that New York was able to evacuate people on ferries during the 9/11 attack but Los Angeles, known for its thriving coastline, does not have a similar option.
'It's a must,' he said. 'We are going to have an earthquake someday as well; we can't leave that out.'
From Beyoncé and Jay-Z to Lady Gaga and famously Johnny Carson, Malibu is an enclave known for megastars and mega sunsets. It's also what swells this town of about 11,000 into a tourist mecca attracting 13 million visitors a year, according to the City of Malibu.
While there is a city bus route between Los Angeles and Malibu, one look at the parked cars jamming the shoulder of PCH makes it clear the automobile is the preferred mode of transportation here. Cruising PCH is a culture all of its own.
Maischoss said it's time to rethink that.
'Don't you think you'd rather take this ride?' she told CNN from the deck of a Harbor Breeze catamaran cruising up the Southern California coastline. 'I sit bumper to bumper in that congestion; I've done it for 20 years. You'd much rather be on this side of it. It's actually good for the environment to move us onto the water.'
The long-term goal, she said, is to expand the ferry service farther up and down the coast — as far north as Ventura and potentially Santa Barbara, another popular tourist destination. But for now, she'll settle for a Malibu route if it means their community thrives in the wake of the fires.
For Shane, a successful ferry will be one more improvement to PCH and an honor to Emily's legacy.
'I didn't want her to be 'who's that poor kid that was killed on PCH?'' he said. 'I want people to know her name … because she was a very empathetic, giving person at 13 years old.'
Still, he noted, since Emily's death in 2010, 60 people have died on Malibu's strip of the PCH – still paradise, he says, just one now paved with tears.
'It's unfortunate because we are in one of the most beautiful places on earth,' Shane said.
Emily loved the ocean. This weekend, when her father gazes into the Pacific blue, he'll honor her birthday. On Saturday, she would have turned 29.