Most Truckee/Tahoe folks, local or not, use the Reno-Tahoe International Airport (RNO) to fly in and out of the region. RNO serves a vast number of people and is seeing an active rise in passenger traffic — April and May 2026 posted the strongest monthly counts in nearly 20 years.
Just like the Tahoe Basin is looking at options to finetune parking, RNO is doing the same: A new long-term parking option just opened the end of July for $16 a day. This is the fourth parking option for the airport, providing 560 new spaces. Jena Esposito, manager of public affairs for the Reno-Tahoe Airport Authority, shared information about this new Park & Walk Lot, as well as what’s on the airport authority’s mind when it comes to parking options in years to come.
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What can those looking to use the Park & Walk Lot when flying out of RNO expect?
Jena Esposito, Reno-Tahoe Airport Authority Manager of Public Affairs: This lot was formerly used as an overflow parking area but bringing it to passengers as a 24/7 parking option helps alleviate some of the constraints and some of the challenges with parking at RNO.
We are constantly seeing our parking maxed out during the busy travel periods of Burning Man, weekends, holidays. So having a fourth parking option that’s available is going to help … You can go to renoairport.com/parking to look at all of our parking options, including the Park & Walk Lot. On that website, you can also see the real-time parking space availability across our four lots. For certain parking areas like the long-term car garage, you can also reserve a space in advance online.
[The new lot] is considered walkable. It is about a 10- to 15-minute walk, so if that’s not going to suit your travel needs, please plan ahead and find another transportation option that fits best for you. But by adding this lot, we were able to offer a discounted rate.
Editor’s note: The Park & Walk Lot does not have shuttle services.
Are other parking projects on the horizon at RNO?
We have seen a lot of growth, which we’re excited to see, [and] that has been in alignment with our region. More people have moved here; our population has grown. Visit Reno-Tahoe, The Reno-Sparks Convention and Visitors Authority, also reported record numbers for visitation and tourism. We’re keeping up, we’re expanding, we’re growing with our community to meet the needs for your service.
There is the MoreRNO billion-dollar infrastructure program, so there are new concourses that are coming to replace the current ones. There’s a brand-new transportation center that will house the rental car agencies, limos, shuttles, all of that … And then we have some other construction going on around the airport. We realize that we’re in the middle of the city. We are space constrained at RNO, so having all the solutions available to us for parking is really important.
In 2028, the rental car agencies that occupy that first level of the parking garage will vacate, and that move will open up about 600 parking spaces for travelers.
What innovative ways are airports in general or RNO considering when it comes to parking? Obviously, you encourage people to get a ride if they can, and plan ahead. But is there anything else that as an airport you can do to encourage people to not even bring a car in the first place?
One thing we are always trying to keep in mind is that RNO is the home airport for about a million people. It includes people in Truckee, at [Lake Tahoe], Winnemucca, Susanville. There are no other choices for an airport between Sacramento and Salt Lake … And those people, especially from the lake and the surrounding area and Winnemucca, they’re driving one to two to three hours before they start their trip. We need to make sure we have parking for as many people and as many passengers as possible. So, with the future of parking, I don’t have a crystal ball, but the airport has done some parking studies to give us some potential solutions to explore more, but they have to meet certain requirements and ensure that we’re moving forward in a financially responsible way. We’re always looking for solutions.
Should parking be maxed out and since it’s not financially feasible to get [a new parking project] on the ground right away — are there conversations about having offsite parking partnerships with casinos?
I’m not sure if those conversations have been happening [but] what we do is there’s an [overflow lot by the Hyatt Place Reno-Tahoe Airport, right across the street from RNO].
People are currently parked there because we max out the available space we have and then go into overflow with some frequency. Most weekends through the summer we’re in overflow … The overflow lot is $18 a day, and then it does have shuttle service.
