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
An improved public transportation system run by the City is a great idea. Now if someone can up with a way to fund that without placing the burden on the property tax payers backs it would be even better. Suggestions anyone?
Any bus system proposed to be run by the City should be self-supporting, so farebox receipts are set high enough to cover the actual costs of operation, and city taxpayers are not burdened with another costly albatross like the airport. City taxes and fees are higher already for city residents, with no corresponding upgrade in services provided.
I dunno, maybe if they collected appropriate TOT from vacation rentals, there wouldn’ be a problem with funding. Just sayin’.
Before getting a city funded bus system we need to get our city streets needed to be redone. We are lucky that our main street is a federal highway and work on that is done by the state and the feds.
The unstated part of Bill’s plea is that the bus system is not running well. . .noting that the highest proportion of it is already in the City of SLT, except for that part that either goes ‘on top of’ or over the hill (Carson City, Minden-Gardnerville – the Ridge).
Those that want the fare box to ‘cover it’ negate the fact that a lot of municipal transit in this country is Federally-subsidized, as it is absolutely necessary to allow the infirm, the disabled, the elderly, families with children with not much money, etc. to have a way to get where they need to go. . . and this does not include those with no driver’s license (for whatever reason), not to mention those who actually believe in the ideas behind walkable, bikable communities: cleaner air, less pollution, reduction in fumes & congestion – and, of course, less CO2 emissions that auto traffic is mostly responsible for. . .whatever the number.
Better transit actually saves ‘wear & tear’ on roadways.
Just the suggestion alone of collecting the fair share of vacation home rentals will make for a better community, if not renegotiating ski area taxes which are also to be considered part of the community effort, above & beyond the orchestrated volunteer efforts they provide. . . offset the current imbalances with a new balance moving ahead.
WHY DO WE PROVIDE SERVICE TO OTHER CITY’S AND NOT MEYERS!!!!!! WE ARE JUST AS MUCH A PART OF LAKE TAHOE AS CARSON CITY AND GARNERVILLE !!! IF NOT MORE!!!!
IM TIRED OF HEARING THAT RIDERSHIP AND LACK OF MONEY ARE THE REASONS WHY… I DOUBT RIDERSHIP FROM THOSE PLACES ARE MAKING IT WORTHWHILE IN GOING THERE… SEEMS LIKE A WASTE OF FUEL AND TIME!
We provide service to those areas because our service went bankrupt and we had to join another company in order to keep any service at all. The other company is TTD and they were already providing service to those areas via agreements with Carson City and Douglas county. If you wish to have bus service than maybe you should be speaking to your local goverment about suppling that namely El Dorado County
I have .. And that too is a waste of time