Coasting Past LA Gridlock
- Brooks McKinney, APR
- 2 hours ago
- 10 min read
Patricia Keeney-Maischoss’s proposed high-speed coastal ferry service would bypass LA traffic congestion and restore access to regional cultural events for all.
In June 2022, Patricia Keeney-Maischoss, a Malibu, Calif.-based entrepreneur and executive recruiter, traveled to Croatia with her son, Michael, the youngest of her three college-aged kids. To maximize their cultural experience, Michael had insisted they use Croatia’s renowned ferry system to island-hop. (The country has more than 1,200 islands, islets, rocks, and reefs, only about 48 of which are permanently inhabited.)
Over the course of two weeks, mother and son visited eight of Croatia’s largest and most popular islands, including Hvar, Mljet and Brač. Even more memorable than Croatia’s rugged scenery and deep blue coastal waters, however, was the convivial nature of its ferry system.
“Croatian ferries are a very communal experience, filled with locals and tourists from all walks of life,” explains Keeney-Maischoss. “We traveled with people heading to/from work, delivery trucks, families on holiday, cyclists and backpackers. What struck me most was that these folks think nothing of hopping on a ferry to visit friends or have dinner on another island. Ferries are just woven into the fabric of their lives.”
Reimagining the Roles of Ferries
On Jan. 7, 2025, as residents of Malibu, Pacific Palisades, and Altadena fled some of the most destructive wildfires in Los Angeles history, Keeney-Maischoss’ perspective on ferries took a dramatic turn, morphing from a fond vacation memory into a potential lifeline for LA residents.
Fueled by strong Santa Ana winds and abundant drought-fed vegetation, the fires created total gridlock for Malibu and Pacific Palisades residents trying to escape their neighborhoods by car.
When flames outraced the flow of traffic, in fact, many drivers abandoned their cars and began walking or running to safety.
“In the weeks that followed that dark day,” Keeney-Maischoss recounts—she and her family had evacuated two weeks earlier to escape the Franklin fire, and escaped harm on Jan. 7 by sheltering in place at their Malibu home—“I realized that ferries could be a perfect solution for gridlock on PCH and other major Southern California arteries.”
Soon thereafter, her concept for a high-speed passenger ferry that would connect Malibu with Santa Monica, Marina del Rey and the proposed San Pedro to Long Beach water taxi, and potentially provide a safe evacuation route by sea for fire-threatened neighborhoods, was born.
Escaping Gridlock, Adding Options
Today, as CEO of Pier to Pier, the company she founded in January 2025 to develop the first coastal ferry system from Malibu to Long Beach, Keeney-Maischoss leads a diverse, multidisciplinary team tackling the technical, logistical, and political challenges of launching the service.
Her team has dubbed the ferry’s Pacific Ocean route the Blue Highway.
A self-described “disruptor and community builder,” Keeney-Maischoss is also the founder of Malibu Colony Partners, a boutique global advisory firm, and Helloradar.ai, an executive search AI platform.
“Traffic on PCH and the 405 freeway has turned into absolute gridlock during many hours of every day,” she observes, “turning what ought to be a 30-minute drive into a two-hour-plus slog for many. Bumper-to-bumper traffic has become a barrier for people seeking to attend cultural events outside their neighborhoods. A ferry service could be just the ticket for those folks.”
A ferry service could also add valuable transportation options for folks attending upcoming FIFA World Cup matches in Los Angeles in June/July 2026, Super Bowl LXI (61) in February 2027, and the LA Olympics and Paralympics in July 2028, she adds.
Thriving on Change
Keeney-Maischoss, the daughter of an entrepreneur-turned-nuclear-fusion-physicist (dad) and a civic-minded interior designer, was born in Santa Monica and raised in West Los Angeles in the 1970s.
The youngest of four kids, she grew up at a time when her local school system, the LA Unified School District, was under attack for perceived segregation in its schools. In 1978, the LA County Superior Court ordered the district to take steps to ease this racial imbalance, including busing. As a result, Keeney-Maischoss spent her elementary school years being bused to various schools outside her neighborhood.
“I was only allowed to attend my neighborhood elementary school the semester of my birthday,” she recalls.
“The other semester, I was sent across LA to a sister school. Over time, I went to a lot of schools.”
Fortunately, busing requirements had eased by the time Keeney-Maischoss reached high school, allowing her to attend her local high school, University High, all three years. She credits the inconsistency of those early school years, however, with her problem-solving skills and her comfort today recruiting and building diverse teams.
Putting Recruiting First
When it came time for college, Keeney-Maischoss knew she wanted to get out of California. Her love of skiing—“we had family that lived not far from Snowbird and Alta (ski resorts outside Salt Lake City), and I was close to my cousins there”—and her sister’s matriculation at the University of Utah made the choice easy.
After her first year at Utah, Keeney-Maischoss took a summer job with Baeder/Murphy and Associates, an executive recruiting firm in Beverly Hills. Much to her parents’ chagrin, she fell in love with the world of recruiting and decided not to return to college that fall.
“I’m thinking ‘I’ll do this job for the summer and it will provide great connections for the future,’” Keeney-Maischoss explains. “I loved the concept of meeting multiple people every day, being curious about them, learning who fits where in what organization. It began my career in recruiting at a very young age.”
Over the next decade at Baeder/Murphy, Keeney-Maischoss placed advertising executives at TBWA/Chiat Day, Weiden Kennedy, Mattel, Microsoft and Disney, learning how to match creative problem solvers with strategic challenges.
She also continued taking undergraduate classes part-time, initially at nearby Santa Monica College, then later at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. She completed her bachelor’s degree in communication and media studies in 1994.
Learning the Business
From Beverly Hills, Keeney-Maischoss moved to San Francisco to help open the SF/Silicon Valley office for Lucas Group, a recruiting firm, now a subsidiary of Korn Ferry. At Lucas, she led the Group’s retained consumer technology and marketing practice.
“Those were the heady ‘dot-com’ days of the late 1990s and early 2000s,” she reminisces.
Keeney-Maischoss's recruiting focus later turned to the tech world, where, among other start-ups, she helped place early engineers with AI chipmaker Nvidia. She also worked with her father for several years, helping him raise capital for a clean-energy, cold-fusion automotive engine.
Making Adjustments
By 2008, however, Keeney-Maischoss could no longer ignore the realities of family.
“I had phenomenal clients I wanted to continue working with, but I needed to be back in LA,” she explains. “We had aging parents and two children. So we came back to LA, had our third child, and founded Malibu Colony Partners to keep managing the clients that stuck with me after the move.”
Working the Details
Today, Keeney-Maischoss and Pier to Pier are busy securing the approvals of each community on the Blue Highway route—Malibu, Santa Monica, Marina del Rey, and potentially San Pedro and Long Beach—to operate the ferry service while working through the legal, engineering and infrastructure upgrades required to make each community pier “ferry ready.”
At the California State-owned Malibu Pier, for example, Pier to Pier will have to make the current rising-tide gangway compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) standards, an upgrade that Keeney-Maischoss claims can be completed in about 10 days.
The Santa Monica pier, however, will require more substantial upgrades.
“We’ll have to install an ADA-compliant rising-tide gangway (to allow passenger loading and unloading), Keeney-Maischoss notes. “We’ll also eventually have to rebuild the historic Santa Monica breakwater.”
Pier to Pier does not anticipate any major upgrades to accommodate Blue Highway operations in Marina del Rey, Keeney-Maischoss continues. Her team’s current plans call for ferries to dock at the LA County-owned commercial dock at Fisherman’s Village, and coordinate with a proposed shuttle service to LAX.
Securing Safe Passage
To transport ferry passengers, Keeney-Maischoss and Pier to Pier have partnered exclusively with Harbor Breeze, a California-licensed, CARB-compliant vessel operator based in Long Beach/San Pedro.
“Our plan is to start in 2026 with two, 100-foot, 149-passenger, CARB-compliant catamarans,” Keeney-Maischoss says. “These vessels can run at speeds above 26 knots (approx. 30 mph), which will beat the current drive time between, say, Santa Monica and Long Beach.” The catamarans also promise to give ferry riders a smoother, more stable ride than conventional monohull vessels, she adds. “They won’t be bouncing on every wave at 30 mph.”
Funding Reality
Keeney-Maischoss recognizes, of course, that launching a new ferry service will require significant capital investments and that Southern California transportation agencies (think LA Metro and LADOT) are currently operating in budget-constrained environments. That’s why Pier to Pier is relying primarily on private funding to finance the early stages of Blue Highway infrastructure development.
“It’s important to get the basic infrastructure in place to launch and demonstrate the value of the ferry service before requesting funding from public sources,” she emphasizes.
Long term, however, she continues, Pier to Pier hopes to secure federal or state grants or enter into private-public partnerships with destination cities to help lower the cost of ferry tickets, which she currently pegs at something around $35 each way.
Ride Now, Pay Later
To juice interest in the Blue Highway, Keeney-Maischoss plans to stage several ferry “events" during spring 2026. These demonstration rides—likely from Malibu to Marina del Rey, or Marina del Rey to Long Beach—would allow LA-area residents to discover the convenient, convivial nature of ferry operations that she has experienced around the world.
“My goal is to help create equitable mobility,” she offers. “A lot of people in LA are currently priced out of getting on the water. Even without subsidies, I think we can
make coastal ferry rides a lot more affordable than traveling to Catalina Island.”
Such a system, she believes, could also prompt local residents to rethink their resistance, for example, to driving to BMO Stadium in Los Angeles to attend concerts or professional soccer matches, currently a two-plus-hour drive each way from Malibu. Conversely, LA residents could now consider traveling by ferry to Malibu or Santa Monica for dinner, spending their time (and parking fees saved) on a satisfying meal.
“The new West Harbor port in San Pedro could also become a concert destination for folks in Malibu or West Los Angeles,” Keeney-Maischoss suggests, “something they might not have considered before.”
Solving the Last Mile
Which brings Keeney-Maischoss to the topic of how she plans to help ferry riders connect with local transportation options to reach their final destination.
“Santa Monica has lots of affordable daily or even overnight parking options for outbound ferry riders,” she observes. “Inbound riders will have quick access to the Metro E line (runs east-west from Santa Monica to downtown and East Los Angeles) or the Big Blue Bus, which serves Santa Monica, West LA and other regional transit hubs.”
Ferry riders will also have easy access at Santa Monica pier to Uber shared rides, Waymos and bike sharing, she adds.
In Malibu, Metro buses from Santa Monica will help ferry riders reach downtown shopping, while Pier to Pier also hopes to provide shuttles to nearby parking areas.
Marina del Rey offers easy access to free and on-demand shuttle services for nearby neighborhoods and multiple bus lines that connect to key transit hubs.
“In essence,” Keeney-Maischoss suggests, “the ferry provides a great finishing piece to all the investments that LA Metro has made in public transit.”
Paddling for Clarity
Workdays for Keeney-Maischoss typically begin on a paddleboard in the Pacific Ocean just offshore from her Malibu home.
“If I can be in the ocean, that's my happiest morning,” she declares. “My happiest combination is paddle boarding to yoga at SoHo House in Malibu, then enjoying a cup of mint tea. I'm a huge believer that inspiration comes when you are still, so I try to create stillness as much as possible in the morning.”
Keeney-Maischoss spends the rest of most days in face-to-face meetings throughout Los Angeles with clients, Pier to Pier team members or local government officials.
She approaches each conversation with passion—“I’m big energy but do not take ‘no’ well,” she confesses. “If my team and I can bring more authenticity, more listening skills to those interactions, we can accomplish so much more.”
True to her campaign against wasting time on PCH and LA freeways, she travels from meeting to meeting working at the front-seat “desk” in her black Tesla Y configured in self-driving mode.
Rethinking How We Live
Invariably, Keeney-Maischoss finds herself traveling south from Malibu along PCH, thinking about her travel experiences in Croatia and reflecting on how a regular, reliable ferry service could fundamentally alter residents’ experience of living in Los Angeles.
“The question I really want people to start thinking about,” she says, “is ‘why am I not on the water?’ I mean, isn’t that why we live here in the first place? It’s time for the residents of Los Angeles to start connecting with their iconic city by the water, to start enjoying life and going to work in a different way.”
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If you enjoyed this article about innovation in transportation infrastructure, I invite you to read my profile of David Grannis and his plans to develop a high-speed aerial gondola from Union Station in downtown LA to Dodger Stadium. If you'd like to recommend another innovative professional for me to profile on this blog, please send your suggestions to brooks@personsofinfrastructure.com. Many thanks.