Somehow, some way, increased access will happen for Carmel-area State Parks. But not yet.

In 2018, before the County Board of Supervisors banned parking on the east side of Highway 1 across from Point Lobos due to safety concerns, State Parks was working on a potential solution to an intractable safety problem: an overflow of parking on the shoulder of the highway and park visitors crossing the street.

It all hinges on the piece of land State Parks owns just east of Highway 1 and west of The Barnyard in Carmel Valley called Marathon Flats, which the Big Sur International Marathon uses annually as a staging area. The vision is to turn it into a 100-space parking lot. A shuttle service would bring visitors to and from Point Lobos and, eventually, the still-unopened Ixshenta State Park, providing access to the already built San Jose Creek Trail, which remains closed.

Over the past three years, a coalition of various stakeholder groups – including State Parks, the Point Lobos Foundation, BSIM, Monterey Peninsula Regional Park District and the Big Sur Land Trust – have been working to make the vision a reality, but the wheels of bureaucracy move slowly.

State Parks put out an initial study for a month of public review in October. Rachel Saunders, director of conservation for Big Sur Land Trust, which has consultants working with State Parks responding to comments received, hopes that process will be completed by next month.

Brent Marshall, superintendent of the Monterey District of State Parks, says the launch date will likely be in 2023, as the project still needs a coastal development permit to move forward, and his agency is working with Caltrans and the state Department of Transportation to understand their concerns about traffic circulation and what can be done to mitigate it.

Then a permit application would be submitted to the County Planning Commission – it could take months to get on the docket – and pending appeals, it could ultimately end up before the California Coastal Commission.

That news is a setback for those hoping the shuttle would soon provide service to Ixshenta State Park, which remains closed because there is no parking. And because it’s on culturally sensitive land with indigenous resources, there won’t ever be a parking lot by San Jose Creek, home to a spectacular, recently built trail lined with majestic redwoods and rock formations.

There is good news for public access, however. Rafael Payan, MPRPD’s general manager, says he is committed to opening that trail imminently, whether by a permit system and/or docent-led hikes, starting with transportation by van from Palo Corona.

Tom Little Bear Nason, tribal chair of the Esselen Tribe of Monterey County, says he looks forward to that. “It’s going to be a wonderful area for people to go,” he says, adding that he’s happy his tribe’s concerns were heard about building a parking lot in a culturally sensitive area. “I’ve been going to meetings for three years on this,” he says. “It’s frustrating, but I feel like we won, we persevered.”