The conversation cannot stop at “Ugh, this traffic!”
Reno’s midtown and downtown areas are equipped with access to public transportation and bike lanes, but Reno is still mainly a devoted car culture. Additionally, outside of the inner city, Reno’s surrounding areas are still riddled with an inefficient car culture, as access to public transit is sparse.
One glaring problem is the lack of bus service. Most stops at Virginia St. are scheduled as 30 minute increments of wait times during weekdays. The Sparks Marina/ Legends / NNMC RTC route varies from 20-30 minute wait times to hour-long waits. The potential of missing a bus can become catastrophic if making it to someone’s destination on time is important.
With a car, someone’s ability to leave directly from their home directly to their destination can be appealing and give someone a sense of freedom. However, bumper-to-bumper traffic during busier and busier local times of commute may feel less freeing.
At 5 p.m. every weekday, main roads are densely funneled into. Lines of halted cars stretch off into the distance.
Many Sparks-to-Reno commuters rely on Sparks Blvd. and Vista Blvd., where the highway and other roads funnel into, creating more stagnant traffic that completely fills these roads.
Deeper into the desert of Sparks are the Tesla Gigafactory and Panasonic Energy of North America, where employees are shuttled to by the companies. These companies have realized they need to transport their workers to their factories and offices.
However, the rest of the greater Reno area’s workforce members mainly rely on themselves to get to work.
Reno needs its workforce, but many of its workers are forced to sacrifice hours of their day commuting. If Reno could develop more of a bus, biking, micromobility and walking culture, these roads could be more clear, and transportation would not take up such a significant portion of Renoites’ time.
Reno’s development leaning further into its car culture is a dead end. Reno should instead focus on developing a system of transportation that serves its people.