A Bozo on This Bus

[kevin_standlee]

One of the most significant faults of the Tonopah Westercon bid that travelswithkuma chaired a few years ago is that there was absolutely no public transportation of any sort to Tonopah. You could get there only by driving. No more! Trailways is now operating a Las Vegas-Tonopah-Reno route running once a day between the cities (also stopping at Pahrumph, Beatty, Hawthorne, and Carson City) with the Tonopah stop being right at the Tonopah Station Hotel where we'd said we'd hold the convention. This is scary.

Comments

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure. The route is Las Vegas - Tonopah - Hawthorne - Fallon - Reno. (But not Fernley, darn it.) Lisa thinks it might be tied in with some traffic to take people to and from the military bases along the way.

[scott-sanford.livejournal.com]

I only know Fernley (and Tonopah) by reputation, but I would think that Fernley's population would justify stopping the bus there. The seasonal Amazon population alone might do so. And if one is driving from Fallon to Reno there don't seem to be many options that don't go through Fernley anyway.

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

Looking at the schedule of the route, I can see why they miss Fernley. From Fallon they go to Carson City (presumably on US-50) before going on to Reno. That cuts off Fernley.

Now that Amazon is closing the Fernley distribution center and moving it to Reno, there's even less reason for the bus to stop there.

Even though Fernley is larger than Fallon, it's sufficiently close to Sparks that the various common carriers (Greyhound and Trailways) apparently don't consider it worth serving. Maybe the Tesla Gigafactory, which is expected to lead to more people living in Fernley, will lead to some movement on this issue. I suppose I should go to some city council meetings and ask about what the city is doing to get some sort of way to get from Fernley to Reno/Sparks other than driving or paying the local taxi $100 each way to do so.

[scott-sanford.livejournal.com]

If only there were some kind of passenger transport vehicle that moved on smooth high-capacity metal rails... *sigh*