TART increases buses between Tahoe, Truckee

The Tahoe Area Regional Transit bus system will now operate hourly between Tahoe City and Truckee all year long.

The Placer County Board of Supervisors authorized the service expansion at their meeting Tuesday in Auburn.

Come April 6, when Placer County’s public transit system in the Tahoe Truckee area moves to off-season schedules, the TART bus will keep hourly service along the Highway 89 corridor.

The move is one in a series of small but affordable steps Placer County is taking to improve Tahoe’s transit.

“If you look back, that’s what we’ve been doing in the last several years,” said Will Garner, Placer County public works manager. “Small improvements that one at a time are affordable, but make big differences in ridership impact.”

The expansion costs $240,000, funded by a combination of passenger fares, the North Lake Tahoe Resort Association’s Transient Occupancy Tax funds and local transportation funds, Garner said.

Fares are only expected to recuperate 10 percent of the service expansion’s cost.

“It’s conservative because the first year always takes awhile to build ridership,” Garner said.