The Tahoe Transportation District is a free bus service that serves both California and Nevada.

"We connect the South Lake Tahoe area to Minden-Gardnerville and Minden-Gardnerville to Carson City, and we also provide seasonal transit service on the east side of Lake Tahoe from Incline Village to Sand Harbor," said District Manager Carl Hasty.

And a lot of people depend on the service; ridership is about 700,000 people a year.

"I have a disability where I cannot drive so it's either the bus or or a bicycle or walking," said South Lake Tahoe resident Carole Susan Dunphy. "I need to get to shopping, to see friends, all the necessary things."

The district saw an increase in ridership during the pandemic, but COVID has also taken a toll on the local labor market. It's getting harder to find and keep employees here, and that could mean cuts to service.

"The situation on the labor side is getting more acute daily, and it's starting to affect our service," Hasty said. "And that's very concerning for us. It's important we get people in to staff our service or the consequences will be greater. We don't want to see that happen and I don't think our riding public wants to see that; it makes it more difficult for everyone to get to their services, to get to their jobs and to get home."

It's a service that riders have been depending on for more than a decade, in their everyday lives, and when disaster strikes, like when the Caldor Fire burned dangerously close to South Lake Tahoe.

"The bus system, they really saved us when the fire came," Dunphy said. "They turned it into an evacuation service and went door-to-door, helped people out of their apartments, and took them to Gardnerville or the Red Cross shelter, or wherever they needed to go and it just was amazing."

The Tahoe Transportation District is hiring mechanics, utility workers, dispatchers and drivers and will provide training.

For more information, click here: https://www.tahoetransportation.org/

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