24 MONTEREY COUNTY WEEKLY november 21-27, 2024 www.montereycountynow.com says. That said, he still believes the line is a unique gem that should be not just preserved, but put to use. Perhaps before there’s enough demand for an inter-city train that could connect Sand City to Castroville, which would allow passengers to then travel to the Bay Area, Clark thinks there’s a market for a tourist train; maybe on weekends it could be used for actual travel. But those are all just dreams. Clark is the one who called out TAMC for not fulfilling its Prop. 116 obligations to build rail within 10 years—the penalty calls for refunding the money—and as a result, TAMC is currently assessing the value of the rail line and is in active negotiations with the California Transportation Commission as to how to pay it back. Muck, TAMC’s executive director, says the cost of other rail projects the agency is working on, like connecting passenger rail to Salinas, could potentially be credited to offset TAMC’s debt to the state. If, say, TAMC were to do a project, also funded in part by the state, could the total cost of the project be applied to offset TAMC’s debt to the state? Muck says that’s still being negotiated. He also adds that Clark’s belief the track can be restored for use of trains again without a huge investment is unfounded. MST Deputy CEO Lisa Rheinheimer, who is the project manager for SURF!, concurs with Muck’s assessment. She says that restoring the railway would cost about $150 million per mile, as it essentially would need to be rebuilt. But at this point, the question appears moot, because it’s been years since there’s been a concerted effort to bring rail back on the line, as the price tag never penciled out. And now that MST got its coveted permit from the Coastal Commission, it’s full steam ahead with a road. To that end, MST has hustled to secure every other needed permit— permits of a more ministerial nature from Marina, Sand City and PG&E, etc.—before the change of the presidential administration, so as to not imperil the $35 million the FTA has promised to help build it. That was true even before Election Day regardless of who won, Sedoryk says, but on Thursday, Nov. 7, he says MST’s FTA contacts reached out to say that MST had to get all their permits submitted by Friday, Nov. 15. That meant just five business days to tie up all the loose ends with permits. So MST, with help from Sand City and Marina’s staff and contractors, got it done. Now all that is left for the agency is to submit the final design plans, as the project had to be redesigned on-the-fly per the Coastal Commission’s approval. Sedoryk is confident those plans will be submitted within a week. After that, they’ll be subject to review from FTA and Coastal Commission officials, and Sedoryk adds that those agencies have been apprised of the high-priority nature of the project. He’s “100-percent” confident they’ll be met with approval. “I’ve got to be,” Sedoryk says. “I’m not going to anticipate failure.” Everything has to get inked by Jan. 14, he says, for the funds to get secured. Whether litigation can potentially derail SURF! remains an open question, but Sedoryk says that a lawsuit wouldn’t impact funding already promised. So the race—if one uses that term for something moving along for 20 years—is on to get the money locked in. If the SURF! project is ever built, it will take years to assess its impact. There’s a need to move people efficiently to their jobs on the Monterey Peninsula, but the bus is just one line. If one works in Carmel or Pacific Grove but lives in Salinas, how many bus connections would you have to make to get to work? How much wait time? And how much money is it worth to tackle that problem? On the one hand, there is a public agency that’s secured more than $90 million to build it has pushed ahead at every turn to get it over the finish line. The bureaucratic momentum behind SURF! has been real, despite no hard data on how many people will ultimately use it—that’s not knowable. And on the other hand, you have a local transportation network that’s not built to manage the traffic of the present, as thousands of cars commuting to the Monterey Peninsula every day clog up local roads. The hope SURF! offers is that it will be a pressure-release valve that will mitigate that congestion. “We believe when people see the buses actually passing them when they’re on the highways heading south in the mornings and heading north in the afternoons, more people will try parking their cars and riding MST instead,” Sedoryk says. MST’s data, from 2022, for riders on the section of Line 20 impacted by the project comes out to about 190,000 passenger trips. Looking 20 years ahead, MST’s projections for ridership on the line—in the event SURF! is not built—are estimated to be 1.32 million trips in 2045. If the project does get built, that number jumps to 1.7 million annual trips. The delta between those two projections is 380,000 annual trips, meaning that’s how many more drivers—divided by half, if you count the return trip—that MST expects SURF! to take off Highway 1 each year when 2045 rolls around. That’s about 500 cars per day. But the rub is that most commuters who own cars and are confident they can find parking will likely continue driving if they feel it’s faster or more convenient. So the true value of the project—if it ever gets built—won’t be known until traffic conditions worsen, as they are expected to in the coming decades. The project’s evangelists, who tout the greenhouse gas emission reductions it will facilitate, elide the fact that most people aren’t going to ride the bus unless they have to. It’s not clear we can pave our way out of that conundrum. At the same time, even rail enthusiasts aren’t claiming trains would mitigate the commute traffic. The Del Monte, the train that connected the Monterey Peninsula with San Francisco for nearly a century, had its last run April 30, 1971. A Monterey Peninsula Herald story from that day begins, “In keeping with grand tradition, Southern Pacific’s Del Monte Limited arrived 30 minutes late today on what may have been the last northbound run from Monterey.” For locals who dream of restoring rail on the Monterey Branch line, especially now that the plan is to pave over the tracks, the wait will be a lot longer than that. MST’s route network from Marina to Sand City; Line 20, which the SURF! project is designed to serve for a five-mile stretch, is shown in blue. It is one of five total bus rapid transit phases MST is pursuing; the first, the JAZZ line, started service in 2013. The Del Monte, circa 1889. Restoring the railway would cost about $150 million per mile. mst Courtesy City of Monterey
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