CHP Groundbreaking Ceremony for the New Big Sur Office Post

“It’s necessary for public safety due to the fact that we have hundreds of thousands of visitors to this area every year,” says Captain Kyle Foster, commander of the Monterey CHP. “By having this facility, we’re going to be able to provide 24-hour service. Not only to the residents but to the thousands of tourists that come here every day.”

The new resident office will be strategically positioned on Highway 1, just south of the Pfeiffer Big Sur State Park. If everything goes as planned, the new Big Sur post will be finished and fully operational by the summer of 2021. This is something that residents have been waiting for and will help provide service to the tourists in the area.

After the new resident post is fully operational, it will be able to house two full-time CHP officers. It is hoped that the officer’s response time will drastically decrease by having the new resident post – something that the area has needed for years, given the popularity of the park.

Full-time officers staying at the resident Big Sur post will be on-call and capable of being dispatched to the community immediately. At the moment, response times can be as long as an hour and a half. Current response times can be even slower if the call comes in after hours.

Without this new post, the CHP officers who responded to calls had to travel all the way from Salinas to reach Big Sur. This new post will be a valuable waypoint for increasing public safety. Something that has been recognized as a problem in the area for many years.

The new post will enable CHP officers to be far closer to any calls coming from the Big Sur area. The end goal of the new facility is to allow for officers to be on-scene within 15 minutes. This will drastically increase officers’ reactivity in the face of various public safety threats and criminal behavior.