Exploring USA Parkway

[kevin_standlee]

For something connected to today's marriage-equality ruling from the US Supreme Court, see yesterday's post.

Last week, Lisa and I went for a drive into the USA's biggest industrial park, the Tahoe-Reno Industrial Center, located on USA Parkway off I-80 between Fernley and Reno. Recently, the state of Nevada agreed to buy the USA Parkway from the developer who built the park and to continue it down to US-50. The newly-designated NV-439 will thus form a bypass for traffic between Reno-Sparks and Hawthorne, Tonopah, and Las Vegas.


The park is the site of Tesla's "Gigafactory" where they will be making batteries for their cars. This plant is huge, and all of the surrounding cities (including Fernley) are gearing up for the anticipated influx of thousands of workers that will move here when the plant opens. It is, however, difficult to get a good look at the site. Here's one shot of the under-construction factory from the far distance.


And this one is from the access road that appears to be the main route into and out of the site.

Something that concerns Lisa and me greatly is how all of these people will come and go to work. The industrial park deliberately brags about how there is absolutely no housing in the area, the better to avoid any complaints from nearby residents. The nearest cities of any size are Reno/Sparks to the west and Fernley to the east, about 15 miles each way. There is no public transportation (low taxes means low public services, remember?). Either Tesla is going to have to create their own private bus services like Facebook, Google, etc. have done in the Bay Area, or else the amount of congestion into and out of USA Parkway and on I-80 between Reno/Sparks and Fernley is going to be huge.

Complicating things is that while the industrial park is in Storey County (indeed, it takes up most of the northern half of the county) and thus harvests any property tax revenue from the businesses in the park, most of the services impact from new residents are going to be in Washoe County (Reno/Sparks) and Lyon County (Fernley/Silver Springs/Yerrington/Dayton).

Don't get me wrong; I'm not opposed to growth. What worries me is unsupported and unsustainable growth.

Comments

[timill]

All depends in which county Elon builds his Volcano Lair...

[scott-sanford.livejournal.com]

A while back (upon further thought more like twenty years ago, egad), I was in a focus group which was shown various things, one of them being the perennial idea of a cargo ship dock up on Hayden Island. Possibly inconveniently, I knew the neighborhood well from the OryCons held there; I pointed out that while it was right on the Columbia River there were only a few small roads on the island itself and only a single bridge connecting it to the rest of the world - a bridge that is already packed to parking-lot status every rush hour. Nobody had a good answer about how to get cargo off of the dock and the subject kind of died there.

Has anyone asked if Elon Musk plans a prototype Hyperloop connecting his plant and Reno?

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

Musk seems to me to be a lot like Richard Branson, in that he talks about huge schemes and then convinces other people to spend money on them, with Musk getting the credit (and the profit) if they pay off but not taking any hits if they fail.

[redneckotaku.livejournal.com]

This sounds like a good opportunity for the three counties to work together on bus service (Not densely populated enough yet for Light rail or Metro rail) to and from the business park. Two states and the District of Columbia work together by providing funding for DC's Metrorail and Metrobus service. That helps all of Metro DC greatly.

[lindadee.livejournal.com]

Any idea on what effects will all this have on property values (and taxes)?

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

Nobody knows yet. I think Fernley hopes most of the people move there and fill up all of the vacant housing and start paying property taxes, so all of the infrastructure they built a decade or so ago can be paid off.