Letter: Camp Rich signal slowing down traffic
Publisher’s note: The following letter was sent to Caltrans.
Last year as part of the Hwy. 89 upgrade between South Lake Tahoe Y and Camp Richardson, Caltrans put in a pedestrian beacon in hopes of reducing the backup to the car traffic on Hwy. 89. Moving forward to the first holiday weekend (Memorial Day) the new pedestrian beacon at Camp Rich is now stopping all the cars more now than before it was put in because the Beacon is an “on demand” setting, so whenever a pedestrian pushes the button, it stops the cars.
The cars now have to wait, even though there are no pedestrians walking across. This causes even more cars to be backed up because they have to wait for the cycle to finish. It is worse now than before the beacon was put in.
Caltrans, you need to change this to a longer cycle so that the pedestrians have to wait longer, maybe 2-3 minutes or whatever is good just like the cities or any high car traffic area.
I have never seen the cars backed up as far as they are now. The backup (stop and go) is now well past 15th Street toward the Y, which is 1.5 miles. The traffic is also negatively effected on the eastbound side of Camp Rich.
Bob Sweatt, South Lake Tahoe
Note: Caltrans says they are looking into the issue.
Bob,
Thanks for writing to Cal Trans. Cal Trans will have their hands full solving this issue because of traffic coming out of Jamison Beach Road at the same time
Maybe move the lights over and include that intersection into the solution and using a pedestrian scramble crossing for 12 seconds. Then let the Jamison Beach Street traffic exit for 20 seconds, then let the H89 traffic roll for 2-3 minutes?
Until there is a better solution the lights need to be turned off and a traffic cop needs to be hired during peak traffic.
Aloha
With traffic backed up, only three cars at a time were getting through before the light changed because a constant low flow of just one or two pedestrians at a time pushing the button. Seems like the light should allow more people to collect before letting them cross. And definitely let more than three cars through at a time.