Salinas residents attend a workshop on recommended changes to the Intermodal Transit Center.

Salinas officials are planning on major upgrades to the Intermodal Transit Center (ITC), with plans to accommodate extended Caltrain service between Salinas and Gilroy by 2028.

About 20 residents attended a short workshop at City Hall on the evening of Monday, May 11 to learn about possible future improvements to the train station. 

Yesenia Segovia, the City’s assistant planner and Grant Leonard, the City’s planning manager, presented to the public future recommendations and current existing conditions at the train station.

During the meeting, the public went around the room to put rankings on posters with proposed recommendations, from one to five, with one meaning they highly disagree with the recommendations and five meaning they highly support the proposed ideas. These thoughts included circulation and land use, technology and connectivity, transit and rail integration and placemaking and amenities. 

Some proposed ideas ranged from multilingual signage; reducing transfer times; better Greyhound signage; having public restrooms at the train station, reserving a portion of the parking lot for a food truck hub, a playground or open space. Other options included improved pedestrian infrastructure, digital fare payment systems, housing within walking distance of the station and bicycle infrastructure. 

Most people highly agreed with having public restrooms, better signage including multilingual, reducing transfer times and a self-serving kiosk to buy transit service tickets. Residents were neutral about the food truck hub and highly disagreed with the possibility of a nearby playground. 

Kelly McCarthy Sutherland, a 57-year-old Salinas resident and a real estate attorney with Anthony Lombardo and Associates, said building a park in the zone is not wise. 

“My kids went to Sacred Heart School. We had to put a great big fence around the school because the playground was an attractive nuisance for the homeless,” Sutherland says. “We kept finding needles in the playground equipment and that wasn't good.”

Sutherland is also part of the Salinas Valley Tourism & Visitors Bureau board and believes most of the City staff recommendations—including widening sidewalks and pedestrian-only zones—are a bad idea that will create more traffic. 

“The buses and the playground don't work together, and if they are expanding the sidewalk that's a problem because it takes up space and if trucks are passing they are big,” Sutherland says. “It takes my husband half-an-hour most times from one end of Market Street to Sacred Heart Church because the traffic is horrible.” 

Many residents, including Sutherland and her family, take East Market Street and Lincoln Avenue in front of the train station to get home, and she suggests not adding any big changes to the street. 

“None of [these recommendations are] a done deal but simply an idea exercise and we want to see the opportunities we can do as a city in the near term before the train gets here,” Leonard says.

The public can submit any comments on these recommendations to the city clerk’s email at cclerk@ci.salinas.ca.us.