Letter: S. Tahoe should run its own bus service

To the community,

On Labor Day, I tuned in the Giants game. Giants vs. Padres. A Giants commentator said he liked San Diego because it was easy to get around town. You didn’t need a car, he said.

The commentator’s remark caused me to think about the city of South Lake Tahoe’s priorities. The city fathers and mothers spend time and energy talking about transportation and parking. They claim they want tourists and others out of their cars. They want the city to be a bicycle and walker friendly place. So far so good. But it stops there.

Bill Crawford

What has happened is the city has turned over the transportation puzzle to a regional organization that because of its bankruptcy has disbanded. Thus, because of its failure, the Tahoe Transportation District, TTD, has stepped in. For the Tahoe basin it is a regional organization that’s an arm of the TRPA.

The TTD has the community fussing over the loop road. The city should quit the TTD and return to a city bus system that works. In the past the city had such a program. Then there was bus service in the Tahoe Keys. My wife, who at that time was the hostess of the headliners in the South Shore Room, caught the bus on Keys Boulevard to get to work. She still has bus tokens for the bus. As I have said, the city should quit the TTD and return to a city bus system.

Public transportation in the city is a city responsibility. It should be a high city priority. The city is almost 50 years old. It is time to grow up and stop stumbling in the dark on critical subjects such as public transportation.

Bill Crawford, South Lake Tahoe