The Coastal Commission is set to consider the complicated case of the SURF! busway.

David Schmalz here, trying to keep all the strands in my head regarding Monterey-Salinas Transit’s SURF! busway project, a proposed off-highway busway spanning from Marina to Sand City that the California Coastal Commission will consider permitting at its meeting tomorrow, Sept. 12 at the Portola Plaza Hotel in Monterey. 

I don’t think I’ve ever seen a project zig or zag as much as SURF!, and while I was talking to a source about it yesterday, a quote from The Big Lebowski popped into my head. 

"This is a very complicated case, Maude,” The Dude says. “You know, a lotta ins, a lotta outs, a lotta what-have-yous. And, uh, a lotta strands to keep in my head, man. Lotta strands in old Duder's head."

I can relate, but I’ll do my best to briefly recap the project to date: 

In June 2021, MST approved the project with a “mitigated negative declaration,” meaning that MST didn’t plan to do a full environmental review under the California Environmental Quality Act. 

In July 2021, Keep Fort Ord Wild and The Open Monterey Project filed a lawsuit against MST, arguing that it required a full environmental review. 

In February 2022, state Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, introduced SB 922, a bill that, broadly, would exempt transportation projects from CEQA if they advanced the state’s climate, public safety and public health goals. Gov. Gavin Newsom signed it into law that September, and KFOW’s and The Open Monterey Project’s lawsuit was dismissed in July 2023. 

The project sped along from there (so far as projects go), and on June 4 of this year, the Marina City Council upheld the Planning Commission’s approval of the project through its portion of Marina with a 4-0 vote, with Councilmember Brian McCarthy abstaining. Keep Fort Ord Wild and Margaret Davis appealed that decision to the commission June 21. 

But the project still needed approval to build the road along a stretch that is solely under control of the California Coastal Commission. That was set to happen Aug. 7, but after a blistering July 26 report from the agency that recommended denial, MST requested to postpone the hearing to September in an effort to come to some sort of compromise with the agency so that it wouldn’t lose its federal funding before a new administration is sworn in next January. 

State Sen. John Laird, D-Santa Cruz, called a meeting Aug. 16 with various stakeholders, including Coastal Commission staff, which culminated in a new Coastal Commission report on Aug. 30 that recommended approval with one major caveat: Instead of building the busway west of the Monterey Branch Line rail tracks, MST would have to realign the road to where the tracks now lie so that the project would do less damage to dune habitat. 

This came after the board of the Transportation Agency for Monterey County—which owns the easement of the Monterey Branch Line—unanimously approved the realignment after Coastal Commission staff assured the board it would not preclude future rail projects. 

Which brings us to today. The project has been immensely polarizing for years, as many Marina residents do not want it and, among other things, are concerned it will harm one of their only access points to the coast. 

But the project has received outsized support from some very powerful politicians who support it for several reasons that include their belief it will provide racial equity by providing faster commutes for workers in Salinas or Marina that travel to and from the Monterey Peninsula for work. There is also a belief it will significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions and potentially reduce traffic on Highway 1.

The project also has a number of environmental groups opposing it, including the Sierra Club. But the most consequential might be Keep Fort Ord Wild, whose attorney Molly Erickson sent a letter Aug. 22 to the members of the Coastal Commission outlining various arguments, including inconsistency with the Coastal Act. But the most intriguing of her arguments is that it also might not be exempt from CEQA under SB 922 because if a project exceeds $100 million in cost, various conditions must be met that require additional public hearings. 

MST General Manager Carl Sedoryk says the fully funded project is projected to cost just over $90 million, but Erickson estimates it will cost around $130 million. 

Keep Fort Ord Wild’s Michael Salerno adds that it’s wild that the commissioners will consider a project that essentially has no design plans—the realignment means they must be redone—and he notes that it’s tantamount to putting the cart before the horse. 

“It shows how badly this needed an [environmental impact report] in the first place, and why this CEQA exemption is so bad,” he says. “It’s this weird doom loop they got themselves in. In the eleventh hour, they said throw it over the tracks.”

The Coastal Commission is ultimately a political body, and this project has outsized political support. If they do approve it—and if I had to guess, I think they will—I see litigation in the offing. 

Like The Dude said, “a lotta ins, a lotta outs.”

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