The most-watched number in Rancho Palos Verdes right now is a decimal. As of early August 2026, the average movement rate across the active Portuguese Bend landslide boundary sat at 0.99 inches per week, a 9.8 percent drop from July and the first time the citywide average has fallen below one inch since October 2023.
That is genuinely good news, and residents who have lived through two years of buckled asphalt, red-tagged homes, and shut-off utilities have earned the right to feel some relief about it. But the number measures one thing: how fast the ground under Portuguese Bend Community, Seaview, and the surrounding parcels is still creeping. It does not reopen a road to bicycles, and it does not put a shovel in the ground for Wayfarers Chapel. Those two stories are tracking on entirely separate schedules, and neither one bends just because the survey data finally did.
The Number That Broke a Two-Year Streak
The City's Land Movement Updates page breaks the deceleration down by zone, and the pattern is not uniform. The Abalone Cove Landslide slowed by 7.7 percent between July and August, landing at 1.29 inches per week. The Portuguese Bend Landslide itself decelerated by 13.9 percent over the same stretch, the steepest drop of the group, though the city's release did not publish a standalone resulting rate for that zone in the same update.
| Zone | Change, July to August 2026 | Latest reported rate |
|---|---|---|
| Overall active boundary | -9.8% | 0.99 in/week |
| Abalone Cove Landslide | -7.7% | 1.29 in/week |
| Portuguese Bend Landslide | -13.9% | not published in this release |
Context matters here. At the height of the emergency in 2024, parts of the slide were moving 6 to 9 inches a week, with some stretches later clocked as high as a foot per week after two years of heavy rain. A number under one inch is not a return to stable ground. It is the slowest this particular patch of the Peninsula has moved in nearly three years, and it is being read by one very specific audience as a signal worth acting on.
What Southern California Edison Is Actually Waiting For
That audience is Southern California Edison. The utility has told the city that a continued and sustained reduction in land movement near its electrical infrastructure to less than one inch per week would be necessary before it would even consider re-energizing the Portuguese Bend area. The city update said staff was coordinating a meeting with SCE to discuss what that could look like.
The key word in SCE's threshold is sustained. One monthly reading below the threshold is not the same as a sustained trend, and SCE has not committed to a timeline for restoring power even if the numbers keep improving. For homeowners who have been running on generators and solar since the utility cut service, the planned meeting offered the prospect of a first real conversation about re-energization since the shutoff, but not a switch.
Why Palos Verdes Drive South Is Still Closed to Bikes
The two-wheeled vehicle ban on Palos Verdes Drive South has its own history, and it has not moved in step with the land movement numbers at all. The City Council first voted to prohibit bicycles, motorcycles, and similar vehicles on the roughly two-mile stretch from Wayfarers Chapel to Schooner Drive in June 2024, after a crash and a series of near-misses on pavement that was cracking and buckling faster than crews could patch it. The ban has been extended repeatedly since, including a 90-day extension in December 2024, and the September 15, 2026 council meeting had been scheduled to consider another 60-day extension of both the bicycle prohibition and the underlying local emergency declaration.
The reason the ban hasn't loosened even as the land has slowed is straightforward. A slower rate of movement means the road gets worse more gradually. It does not mean the fissures, dips, and irregularities already in the pavement have healed. Four-wheeled vehicles can generally absorb those irregularities at a crawl. Two-wheeled ones cannot, which is the same logic the city cited when it first imposed the restriction. Until the pavement itself is rebuilt or the underlying slide stabilizes for good, the ban is tied to road condition, not to whatever the monthly survey says.
Wayfarers Chapel Is Waiting on Washington, Not on the Weather
Of everything touched by the landslide, Wayfarers Chapel has the longest and most public runway ahead of it. The Lloyd Wright-designed glass sanctuary closed in February 2024 as land movement cracked its foundation and shattered panes of glass, and by September 2024 it had been fully disassembled, with thousands of numbered pieces placed in secure storage on stable ground.
In 2025, the chapel's board and city leaders identified a prospective new home at Battery Barnes, a roughly four-acre former World War II coastal defense site next to the Ken Dyda Civic Center, about a mile west of the original chapel and overlooking Point Vicente Lighthouse and Golden Cove. The site includes a preserved underground bunker and has sat largely unused for decades under U.S. Coast Guard ownership, which is exactly the problem. Nothing moves until the federal government transfers the land.
That effort now runs through Congress. In January 2026, Representative Ted Lieu announced plans to introduce legislation giving the federal government up to ten years to convey the Battery Barnes property to the city specifically for rebuilding the chapel as an educational and community gathering space. Rancho Palos Verdes Mayor Paul Seo called it "a critical step toward making this vision a reality," while noting no commitments or agreements were yet in place. That caveat still holds. As of the city's most recent community updates, the proposal remains in early stages.
The vision itself, if it clears the federal land transfer, goes well beyond a rebuilt chapel and bell tower. Planning documents describe a campus that would also include:
- Public restrooms and parking
- A museum and interpretive visitor center
- A cafe
- Public trails and open space
- Native plant gardens
Estimated reconstruction costs run between 25 and 30 million dollars, not counting whatever it takes to actually secure the land. Robert Carr, a Rancho Palos Verdes native involved in scouting the new site, has described the coastal views and hilltop setting at Battery Barnes as matching the original location in what he called an uncanny way. Matching the view is the easy part. Matching the timeline is not, and nothing about the September land movement data changes how long a federal land transfer takes.
What Actually Changes Before This Winter
The most concrete near-term work isn't about slowing the slide further. It's about weatherproofing what's already there before the rain returns. At the toe of the Portuguese Bend Landslide, electrical cabinets and equipment for the deep dewatering wells near the shoreline are being elevated and enclosed to withstand high surf. Along Palos Verdes Drive South, enhanced drainage measures are going in to reduce how much pumping is needed when the road floods during storms, floods that have caused temporary closures in past winters.
All of that winterization work is scheduled for completion by mid-October, with most of it on track to be finished by the end of September, which is essentially now. It's a narrower, more mechanical kind of progress than a headline deceleration rate, but it's the piece most likely to determine whether this winter looks like the last two or something calmer.
None of these threads, the survey data, the SCE threshold, the bike ban, the chapel's federal paperwork, run on the same calendar, and treating them as one story is how residents end up expecting a spring that isn't coming. The land is moving slower. The road is still closed to bikes. The power is still off. The chapel is still in storage. All four of those things are true at once, even though only the land movement rate has slowed.
If you're weighing what any of this means for a specific property in Rancho Palos Verdes, whether you're inside the landslide boundary, watching from just outside it, or trying to time a sale or purchase around what happens next, Gayle Probst has been tracking this market long enough to give you a straight answer instead of a guess. Reach out for a complimentary market consultation built around your actual address, not the headline number.
This article is general information, not legal, tax or financial advice. Consult a qualified professional about your situation.
