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.