Taking Tahoe to new heights?

To the Editor:

There is no question, that communities around the lake need an update. Peeling paint and dry rot is not a becoming look for the pearl of the Sierra. Nor is the Disneyland approach of over-commercialization. We might as well have TRPA build a monorail around the lake and charge a fee for the ride. Fodor’s has called it out, as has the Reno Gazette-Journal: We are loving Tahoe to death.

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The agencies to protect the lake bend to every new craze for more profit opportunities. Be it scooters or e-bikes that frequently litter the landscape it’s all good. New venues like the Stateline event center are welcomed, but not the traffic they bring. The access roads are also in need of an update. Narrow and winding, they are frequently a parking lot during the height of the season. But the new woke planners have a special treat for us, they want them to be even narrower. NDOT proposed to put Highway 50 on a ‘Road Diet’ to slim it down to two lanes. Despite a firm ‘no’ from local residents, they are hell bent to ‘solve’ the traffic congestion with fewer lanes. And of course, repurpose the other lanes for bike paths. To avoid the lack of logic in this plan, they claim it will improve safety. Of course, that’s not correct either, as Road Diet victims in Southern California have found out, there are more pedestrian and bicycle victims now and 56% are the fault of the pedestrians.

And lastly, there is the Caldor Fire and the only evacuation route for all of South Lake Tahoe and the East Shore. They even admit that they are not familiar with the town of Paradise. Nor do they see the parallels to Tahoe. How many people have to burn in their vehicles during evacuation to convince the planners that their wishful thinking has real-life and death consequences?

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Betty Klein, South Lake Tahoe