24 MONTEREY COUNTY WEEKLY JUNE 18-24, 2026 www.montereycountynow.com clogs with traffic. From there, it’s another right on what looks like a side street in Roy Diaz Street, which eventually curves into an onramp for northbound Highway 101. What percentage of employees commute to work in a personal vehicle versus public transportation remains to be seen—documents filed with the city show plans for 1,103 employee parking spaces. Carl Sedoryk, general manager/CEO of Monterey-Salinas Transit, says the agency has been in contact with Amazon to come up with ways to reduce traffic congestion around the facility. Options include Amazon funding the extension of existing bus routes, adding new routes or the company providing subsidies to employees to participate in MST vanpools. Amazon is waiting for the results of a traffic study before it proceeds, according to Sedoryk. Ask commuters in the area about the new Amazon facility, and they’ll likely question how the inevitable added traffic will further congest the streets. The expected added time to get to home may be an inconvenience for many, but for some businesses, it could hurt their bottom line. Norm Groot is the executive director of the Monterey County Farm Bureau, whose office is located on Abbott Street near its intersection with Harkins Road, where northbound traffic from Amazon is expected to travel. The area is home to various agricultural shipping and cooling facilities, including Taylor Farms, Tanimura & Antle and D’Arrigo Brothers. The major concern, Groot says, is how traffic delays will impact freshly harvested product that is on its way to a cooling facility, when minutes can determine whether it ends up in a store or landfill. “It’s the critical crunch time,” he says. “Every delay impacts the product itself and whether or not it will have a shelf life.” Work has been in the planning stages for years to mitigate the increasing amount of traffic in the area, long before Amazon came to town. But those projects will come to be long after Amazon is operational. The US 101 South of Salinas Project, developed by the Transportation Agency for Monterey County and Caltrans, plans to add a network of new frontage roads along Highway 101, as well as reconstruct the interchange at Abbott for northbound and southbound traffic, and upgrade the Chualar interchange, among other things—likely by 2031. In the meantime, an auxiliary lane was added on Highway 101 for vehicles entering from Spence Road in 2023. Later this year, temporary barriers will be placed at 11 uncontrolled intersections between Salinas and Chualar to prohibit traffic from making left- or U-turns onto side streets. Permanent barriers are expected to be completed by the end of 2027. The overall project, which includes new interchanges, is currently in the environmental review phase, according to TAMC, with Caltrans seeking grant funding for the first phase of construction at the end of 2026. That gap between Amazon going live and when the South of Salinas Project is completed is what concerns Farm Bureau members the most, Groot says. Representatives of the business community came up with some plans to help mitigate traffic, Groot says, such as retiming traffic lights and restriping lanes, that they submitted to the city, which has retained a consultant to look into the traffic. “There’s a lot of concerns about how traffic is going to be handled,” he says. “I’m hoping we can get some sort of relief in the meantime.” Such concerns over traffic, and the city’s internal approval of the project, were the subject of a lawsuit filed in 2024 against the City of Salinas by two Salinas residents and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters Joint Council 7. The suit challenged Carrigan’s 2021 decision to loosen a use restriction on the property, and the Community Development Department’s approval of the facility’s site plan on Sept. 17, 2024. In both cases, the suit alleges the city did not provide the required public notice or conduct an environmental study on the amendment. “The project…will generate a substantial quantity of truck and other vehicle traffic on local roads, will cause significant impacts on the environment, not to mention public health and safety, that were never disclosed, evaluated or mitigated,” according to a petition written by attorney Mark R. Wolfe. The city denied the allegations. Monterey County Superior Court Judge Carrie M. Panetta sided with the city in a December 2025 ruling. “The specific plan contemplates future changes and was intended to be interpreted broadly and with flexibility to encompass new and unforeseen facilities,” she wrote. “Therefore, the actions by the City do not appear to constitute an abuse of discretion.” The city sought to have the plaintiffs pay its attorney fees of $42,000, but that request was dropped on March 16. The Salinas Ag-Industrial Center was envisioned as benefiting the agriculture industry. But with city officials striking a few words in the plan, which paved the way for Amazon and the concerns over traffic, will the area now hurt the industry in an ironic twist? Groot says that remains to be seen. “Everyone is looking at how this is going to play out in the next five to 10 years,” he says. “We will really see how it plays out with this traffic mitigation and whether we can continue to move product to those facilities.” Those 1,600 workers will have to come from somewhere, and those who may have been thinking about working in Monterey County’s largest industries—agriculture and hospitality—may be enticed by what Amazon has to offer. Banke says Amazon will offer health care coverage for employees and their families, 401(k) matching, up to 20 weeks of paid parental leave and prepaid college tuition. “I’m sure both agriculture and hospitality are concerned about where these workers are going to come from,” Groot says. “There’s probably some who will make that change and leap into something where they can work inside and in a closed environment. Let’s just say they have comparable wages in both of those sectors.” Abbott Street, which runs parallel to Highway 101, frequently backs up with trucks and other traffic from nearby industrial and agricultural operations. A project is years away to improve access to the highway.
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MjAzNjQ1NQ==