The Reno-Tahoe metropolitan area is an interesting case study. First, it is located in the same region as major ‘new economy’ centers such as the San Francisco Bay Area, Seattle, and Los Angeles. The policies and decisions by policy makers had to recognize these close markets and respond accordingly. Second, the region pursued an aggressive business attraction strategy. A now famous anecdote describes how the planning manager for Storey County scrawled out a grading permit on the spot for Tesla executives to convince them to locate to the region[1].  Furthermore, the Tahoe-Reno Industrial Center has been a long-term public private partnership which has seen Storey County collaborate with private landowners to develop a large employment center on the outskirts of the urban center[2].

Planners today will require new methods of quantifying proposed projects. A paper I wrote with a fellow planning student demonstrated a new methodological approach to understanding the impact of bicycle infrastructure on accessibility. Our paper combined the level of traffic stress index developed by the Mineta Institute to measure the quality of bicycle infrastructure and an energy consumption method of limiting distance.