Is the surf up, or down?
In the case of Monterey-Salinas Transit’s SURF! project – a six-mile, bus-only roadway contemplated west of Highway 1 from Marina to Sand City, that remains an open question.
Hanging in the balance is a plan for rapid transit, on zero-emission buses, from Marina to Sand City that would bypass Highway 1 traffic going south the morning and north in the evening and, hopefully, provide hospitality industry and other workers who live in Marina or Salinas a reliable and faster option to reach their jobs via public transit.
MST’s board approved the project in 2021, along with exemptions from the California Environmental Quality Act, aka CEQA, that would allow the project to move forward without an environmental impact report.
Those exemptions, however, were predicated on state Senate Bill 288, which sunsetted at the end of 2022. However, another state law, SB 922, took effect Jan. 1 of this year, and among other things, it allows for CEQA exemptions for rapid transportation projects. MST’s board adopted new CEQA exemptions for the project pursuant to SB 922 on March 13, but MST General Manager Carl Sedoryk says that wasn’t a reapproval of the project – it was making sure those new exemptions were applied to it. (MST is currently defending itself in litigation with two parties over its approval for the project under CEQA.)
But perhaps the most consequential buzzsaw ahead for SURF! is the California Coastal Commission, which enforces a different law: the California Coastal Act. And while the board of the commission is an inherently political body – it’s composed of appointed officials – its staff is not.
And in written communications in 2021, since-retired Coastal Commission planner Mike Watson made quite clear that, as approved, the SURF! project is not compliant with the Coastal Act. Precisely, his words were: “not approvable.”
Among other things, the Coastal Commission has asked for documentation on mitigations for impacts on sensitive habitat, and for alternatives to the project as proposed. To date, it has yet to receive either, but Sedoryk says his agency will be submitting a coastal development permit application to the Coastal Commission by Friday, March 31.
Both Sedoryk and Lisa Rheinheimer, MST’s assistant general manager, say that all of those concerns will be addressed in the application. Much of the project area is within the scope of Marina or Sand City – both of which have Coastal Commission-approved local coastal plans, which allows the cities to approve coastal permits – but there is a part of it outside of both, so Sedoryk says MST will apply directly to the Coastal Commission first, as approvals – or denials – from either city could be appealed.
“The Coastal Commission seems logically to be the place for us to go to first get that determination,” Sedoryk says, adding that the process is the “most complicated and most intensive” of the three applications.
And while the Coastal Commission has yet to see any of the work MST has been doing to address Coastal Act concerns, both Sedoryk and Rheinheimer say a team of consultants – engineers, planners, scientists – have been working for several months to address them.
Sedoryk says that Coastal Commission staff can take a “narrow” view regarding impacts on sensitive habitat, but he’s hopeful that the commissioners take “a broader view of things like equity or access.”
Rheinheimer adds that she hopes the commissioners will determine “on the balance” that the positive impacts of the project – like, theoretically, reducing greenhouse gas emissions – will outweigh whatever negative impacts there may be on habitat.
The fate of the project, which is budgeted at $66 million and is fully funded, will ultimately come down to what the 12 voting members of the Coastal Commission decide.