Across North Lake Tahoe, the TOT-TBID Dollars At Work program is positively impacting the region, from workforce housing and transportation solutions to environmental stewardship and community vitality. In the following op-eds, local leaders share insights into how these funds are supporting impactful programs and addressing some of the region’s most pressing needs. Together, their perspectives offer a closer look at the power of reinvestment and collaboration in shaping a more sustainable and resilient Tahoe.
The cost of doing nothing: A call to action for North Lake Tahoe
Tony Karwowski
Published in the Sierra Sun on June 22, 2025 >
North Lake Tahoe is a destination unlike any other, celebrated for its unparalleled natural beauty, world-class recreation, and a unique mountain culture that each of us cherishes. As the president of the North Tahoe Community Alliance and a 20-plus year resident of the region, I can speak firsthand to the necessity of maintaining our unique sense of community, a healthy business environment, and how vital preserving our natural environment is. Our success as a community is intertwined with these priority themes. A healthy, well-managed environment will provide experiences that bolster our business community and provide the health and wellness benefits we have chosen to live here for. A thriving economy generates funds to improve the quality of life for all who live, work and play here. The choices we make today about how we manage tourism, our community, and our environment directly impact the resources and tools we have to address the needs of tomorrow.
Without tourism, fewer people could call North Tahoe home, and those who do would have access to fewer essential services. Almost all aspects of our community life rely on tourism, as it supports our favorite restaurants, shops, and cultural and recreational activities. Without tourism, facilities like our beloved trail network, our favorite mountain resorts, boat ramps, and beaches would have greatly reduced resources for critical maintenance and capital investment. Without the funding required to invest in and maintain them, some amenities might simply not be offered at all.
Everyone who enjoys Tahoe is deeply connected to the environment we celebrate and share. Preserving it is essential, and we need a vibrant economy that enables us to care for our infrastructure in a way that preserves our environment for generations to come. Both public and private projects that invest in our infrastructure better equip our community to manage and reduce human impacts in our environment.
If we don’t have a concerted effort to address critical infrastructure, housing, and transportation challenges, we risk undermining the very things that draw people to this area and make it a great place to live. Ultimately, this jeopardizes the future of our local economy and our environment.
The cost of doing nothing is simply too high.
Managing Tahoe Traffic
Gordon Shaw
Published in the Sierra Sun on April 14, 2025 >
Residents, second homeowners, business owners, visitors, and employees — we can all agree that peak traffic congestion in our busy resort region has a big impact on our quality of life. Traffic has long been a challenge in our region. Caltrans counts indicate that the average daily traffic entering/exiting Tahoe on SR 89 and SR 267 from the north totaled 24,800 vehicles in 2022 (the most recent data available), which is only a 7% increase over the volume of 23,100 way back in 1994. A common, but not so simple, question given this longstanding problem is, “Why can’t we just fix it?”
There are three key reasons why we cannot simply build a road system without traffic problems. First, traffic volumes vary greatly between typical and peak conditions. Summer daily traffic on SR 89 just north of Olympic Valley Road is 22% higher on a peak day than an average summer day (17,600 versus 14,500). Winter daily traffic is 55% higher at peak than the winter average (19,100 vs 17,600). And there are relatively few days with particularly high traffic volumes. For instance, traffic on the 10th highest winter day is 16,900, 13% lower than the peak. Put another way, 13% of the total roadway capacity needed to accommodate all existing traffic on a peak day would be needed only on nine days per year or 3% of all days. Providing this peak capacity would be an inefficient use of resources.
Second, the roadway widening needed to avoid peak congestion would degrade our environment. While strategic bottleneck improvements such as the Tahoe City “bypass” can help address specific issues, we can all agree that paving paradise to expand general traffic lanes on long highways is not what we would like to see as residents or as visitors. The limited roadways resulting from our mountain topography also make them inherently susceptible to minor incidents (or poor choices as to where to put on chains!).
Third, the effect of “induced travel demand” indicates that expanding auto traffic capacity on our congested roadways would encourage an expansion in auto travel. Today, many people choose to shift their auto trips to avoid peak times, choose other resort destinations, and increasingly are choosing to shift to shared transit (such as seen in the growth of skier intercept shuttle ridership). Adding more general travel lanes would induce these travelers to add to peak traffic demand. We would thus be “chasing our tail” by expanding auto capacity.
As we cannot build our way out of the problem, we need to focus on how best to manage mobility issues. Fortunately, there are available tools that are proving to be effective. A key strategy is to manage our mobility networks to provide non-auto travel options that allow travelers to have a better day than if they travel by car. Aided by the resorts’ shift to parking reservations, more and more travelers are learning that using shuttle services from an intercept lot makes for a better ski day than attempting to drive directly to the resorts.
Here’s why having local control over how tourism revenues are reinvested matters
Sue Rae Irelan
Published in the Sierra Sun on December 21, 2024 >
When the North Lake Tahoe Tourism Business Improvement District (TBID) was formed by the business community, it created, for the first time, a way for both day and overnight visitors to help contribute to the region’s vitality. It also launched an entirely different way for our community to leverage revenues generated by tourism and a new opportunity for local decision-making related to reinvesting these funds back into our community.
Why does this matter? Simply put, when our community is actively involved in decisions that impact those who live, work and play here, the outcome is better for us all. We – as a collective community – have representation on the committees and the Board of Directors convened by the North Tahoe Community Alliance (NTCA). These members are local business and community organization representatives and residents representing all geographic areas of our region and businesses, both large and small. The collective “we” are vested in this community’s success while recognizing that success relies on achieving balance in the unique environment we all are fortunate to call home.
Prior to the TBID, approximately $5M per year in Transient Occupancy Tax (TOT), paid only by overnight visitors who stay in local hotels or short-term rentals, was reinvested in North Lake Tahoe. Those funds were used to support quality-of-life services like transportation initiatives, bike paths, and other infrastructure upgrades. It also supported economic vitality efforts, including marketing the destination to encourage tourism – the cornerstone industry of our region.
Today, our community has more decision-making ability on how funds generated by tourism are reinvested than ever before. The formation of the TBID gave the NTCA’s locally based volunteer Board of Directors the final decision on the expenditure of TBID funds. And, together with the new committees formed to represent a diverse collection of local voices, the NTCA Board can better advocate for community needs regarding the recommendation of TOT funding expenditures that the Placer County Board of Supervisors ultimately has the authority to approve.
