Sharks Sports & Entertainment LLC v. Federal Transit Administration

Background

Sharks Sports & Entertainment LLC challenged the Federal Transit Administration’s June 4, 2018 Record of Decision approving environmental requirements for the Bay Area Rapid Transit Silicon Valley Phase II Extension Project. The project would extend service approximately six miles from the Phase I terminus in San Jose through central San Jose to Santa Clara, including a proposed Diridon Station. The Federal Transit Administration provided financial assistance, and the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority was responsible for engineering and construction.

The dispute primarily concerned the decision not to provide a parking structure or park-and-ride parking at Diridon Station. Sharks Sports alleged that the Federal Transit Administration violated the National Environmental Policy Act and the Administrative Procedure Act by inadequately assessing and disclosing environmental impacts, failing to supplement the environmental review, and failing to consider a reasonable range of alternatives. Sharks Sports specifically challenged the review’s treatment of parking spillover, the loss of approximately 715 existing parking spaces, indirect and event-related impacts, scientific methods, earlier parking studies, transit-oriented joint development, and tunneling methods.

Preliminary matters

The court denied Sharks Sports’ requests for judicial notice of two documents. One document had previously been rejected as a proposed addition to the administrative record, and the other postdated the agency’s environmental review and decision. The court also denied Sharks Sports’ renewed request concerning travel-demand raw data, finding that the request was untimely, improperly raised, and prejudicial to the summary-judgment schedule. The court further concluded that the Federal Transit Administration had considered the tables in the environmental review, not the underlying raw data, and that Sharks Sports had waived the argument by failing to raise it in its opening motion.

Court’s analysis

The court explained that the National Environmental Policy Act is a procedural law. It requires an agency to take a “hard look”—a reasonably thorough examination—at environmental consequences and reasonable alternatives, but it does not require the agency to choose a particular result. Review under the Administrative Procedure Act is narrow and deferential: the court asks whether the agency considered relevant factors and gave a rational explanation, not whether the court would have made the same decision.

The court rejected Sharks Sports’ argument that the Federal Transit Administration categorically treated parking as outside the National Environmental Policy Act. The environmental review recognized that transit projects can affect parking availability and location, parking demand, and on- and off-street parking during construction and operation.

The court also rejected the claim that the no-parking decision was predetermined. The documents cited by Sharks Sports showed that no parking was proposed at Diridon Station during the project’s development, but they did not show an irreversible commitment of resources before environmental review. The court found no evidence of the unusual circumstances required to establish predetermination or bad faith.

The court concluded that the environmental review adequately considered parking spillover. It discussed the loss of existing spaces, new parking at the Alum Rock and Santa Clara stations, approximately 14,450 publicly available parking spaces within one-half mile of Diridon Station, possible parking-management measures, increased transit use, and ridership and access modeling. The court held that the review also adequately considered the direct loss of approximately 715 spaces and indirect and event-related effects involving the SAP Center, including construction impacts and mitigation measures.

The court rejected Sharks Sports’ challenge to the review’s “scientific integrity.” It found that the agency reasonably used a constrained mode-of-access model, which accounted for the absence of BART-specific parking and projected that no more than 0.5 percent, or 68 average weekday BART riders, would drive and park at Diridon Station in 2035. The court also found that the 2017 Parking Inventory was a rational approximation of parking supply, even though it did not distinguish between all private and public or reserved and publicly available spaces.

The court held that the environmental review adequately addressed earlier analyses and explained why updated assumptions led to different parking conclusions. It also held that the transit-oriented joint development was an independent, nonfederal action with independent utility and was not sufficiently intertwined with the federally funded project to require additional National Environmental Policy Act analysis.

The court rejected Sharks Sports’ supplementation argument because the environmental review already analyzed both single-bore and twin-bore tunneling methods and their potential effects and mitigation measures. It also held that the review considered a reasonable range of alternatives and noted that Sharks Sports did not identify a specific omitted alternative.

Disposition

The court concluded that the Final Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement/Supplemental Environmental Impact Report did not violate the National Environmental Policy Act or the Administrative Procedure Act. It denied Sharks Sports’ motion for summary judgment and granted the Federal Transit Administration’s motion for summary judgment.