As we close out the second year of weekend/holiday reserved parking at Palisades Tahoe, we want to extend a sincere thank you to our guests and employees who continue to drive the success of this program. We fully understand that the program requires planning and action on the part of those who participate and that it is a shift from previous years, but, through your actions, the program has resulted in real and significant improvements to our operations, increased carpooling and alternative transit adoption, measurable positive environmental impacts, and benefits to our community that extend beyond our skiing and riding guests.
Improvements to our Operations
We go into each parking reservation date with a known number of spots and estimated guests. This allows guests to arrive at any time, knowing that they have a reservation. We can all remember the days of having to leave your house before 7am, sit in traffic, and hope that a space would be available on arrival. This program, and more importantly, your adoption, has eliminated uncertainty, gridlock, and frustration.
Carpooling and Alternative Transportation Adoption
It’s tough to change behavior that includes reducing reliance on personal vehicles and using alternative modes of transportation, but together, we have done just that. In just two years, our guest vehicle occupancy has shifted from 1.3 riders per car to 3.7 riders per car.
Our Park n Ride program from Truckee, Tahoe City, and the West Shore Sherwood Shuttle increased from an underwhelming 500 riders during the 2022/23 winter season to an impressive 14,053 riders this season – a 28-fold increase!
In partnership with Mountaineer Transit Company and your use of the free on-demand service, we are on track to have served 100,000 riders this season. Not only did this reduce traffic on roads within Olympic Valley and Alpine Meadows, your ridership increased parking availability, further reduced carbon emissions and reinforced that with viable options, we can change behavior in favor of convenient alternatives.
Positive Environmental Impacts
Through your adoption of carpooling, alternative transit, and fewer vehicles idling on area roadways, over 53,000 vehicles were removed from area roads and 626 tons of CO2 were kept out of the atmosphere since inception of the program (2 seasons). These significant achievements were a direct result of more than 178,000 of you choosing shared transit options.
Community Benefits
While we were well aware of the negative impacts of increased traffic as a result of condensed commute times of skiers/riders in past years, it was not lost on us that these impacts were felt well beyond our own audience. Workers throughout our region whose jobs do not directly involve the resort, parents shuttling children to non-resort locations for weekend activities, and people just going about their lives for recreation and necessities were all impacted by skier traffic, but this is simply no longer the case. Commutes from Truckee or Tahoe City, which were previously taking several hours due to traffic, have now been reduced to a very manageable drive. All of this is a direct result of spread-out arrival times due to the certainty of parking spots, a refusal to accept that everyone can just get on the road and wait for a parking space that caused backups on Olympic Valley Road and HWY 89, and most importantly, your participation and embrace of the program.
Thank you!
We could not have accomplished any of this without the support and assistance of our employees, guests, the community, as well as our public agencies and organizations that are very much part of the solution. Thank you for your thoughtful adaptability and for your understanding that these were necessary changes that required your active participation. Thank you for being part of the solution.
A special thank you to the agencies that supported and assisted in this effort.
- Placer County
- North Tahoe Community Alliance
- Town of Truckee
- California Highway Patrol
- Placer County Sheriff
- Tahoe Area Regional Transit (TART)
- Mountaineer Transit Company
- Truckee North Tahoe Transportation Management Association
- My Ride to Work
- Sunnyside Resort
