INCLINE VILLAGE, Nev. — The Tahoe Transportation District has announced the establishment of a new committee aimed at receiving opinions and ideas from Incline Village residents, businesses, and transit users about the future of a mobility hub.

The Incline Village Mobility Committee will serve to advise staff at TTD and consultants hired to create a transparent process with the community and ensure that the public’s voice is heard moving forward.

“A lot of what we’re doing is going to be focusing on what the community needs with the mobility hub,” said Washoe County Commissioner and TTD Board Member Alexis Hill. “How can we best address them? Do we need a property as big as the old elementary school? Where is a better location? That’s all part of that process.”

The committee will work with a consultant navigating a site analysis for the project, and the results of the Comprehensive Traffic Study being conducted by Washoe County will help determine the location and needs for transportation in the community.

The location for the mobility hub, which has yet to be determined, has been a topic of conversation among Incline Village residents who have been waiting to find out where it will be built. TTD purchased the old elementary school site in Incline Village as a potential location for the hub, but is still looking at alternatives, and are even considering changing the use of the property — with input of the public as well.

“The grant that we [TTD] received for the mobility hub purchase allowed us to purchase the OES and then do a study about whether that is a good site to have as a mobility hub,” Hill said. “That is it. So it’s a way for us to turn around quickly on these purchases but also do a proper analysis afterwords, which would allow TTD to decide if the OES is too big or not a good fit because of traffic studies.”

Additional options for the OES property include repurposing the land, possibly for workforce housing. Another option is a potential Justice Center, which would bring together the Washoe County Sheriff Offices with the Incline Village Court Offices, allowing more transparent communication and work between the two entities.

All of these ideas will require further work with the community in order to decide what is needed, what is not, and which locations are ideal.

The need for a mobility hub was addressed in the Lake Tahoe Basin Transit Master Plan, which was approved in 2017 and calls for 20% increase in reliance on public transportation in the basin. Mobility hubs are a key aspect of supporting infrastructure in this plan, which creates a first point of contact for visitors on external trips to be linked to local transit networks.

The goal is to create connectivity around the entire lake that can be linked to the hubs, allowing someone to travel from one side of the lake to the other, and eventually, from Reno to Incline Village and back.

“The connectivity of Reno out to Tahoe is a problem,” Hill said. “We haven’t figured out that connectivity for workforce, which is really needed because it’s about $500 a month for people commute to Tahoe right now, and that’s why it’s so difficult to ensure people can live and work in Tahoe.”

Hill explained a big positive that will come from the creation of more mobility hubs around the basin will ensure fewer single-family vehicles are coming in and out of Tahoe and alleviate many traffic concerns for local residents.

One successful initiative that Hill is excited to continue to explore is micro transit in the basin. TART Connect, which was implemented in the summer of 2021 through the Tahoe Truckee Area Regional Transportation system, is an on-demand micro transit system that allows multiple people to get to multiple destinations for free between the hours of 8 a.m. to noon.

“It’s been very popular with the community,” Hill said. “So I’ve been talking with the visitor’s center about how we expand that and get additional funding for. It’s something that TTD wants to undertake and understand how that will be a program that we can do around the entire lake.”

Through the Incline Village Mobility Committee, community members will be able to weigh the options of how to build the hub in Incline Village, and if micro transit should play a larger role in the conversations.

Applications to be on the committee are due no later than 5 p.m. Friday, April 8.

For more information, visit inclinevillagemobilityhub.org.