Finishing touches on Sierra Boulevard include striping and landscaping

SOUTH LAKE TAHOE, Calif. - It's been a long summer of road construction in South Lake Tahoe and it is coming to an end, leaving behind a new Sierra Boulevard and Highway 50 and synchronized lighting on the highway.

Both Caltrans and the City of South Lake Tahoe applied for an extension to the October 15 seasonal grading end and they have through the end of October to finish up their projects.

Paving operations are nearly complete on Sierra Blvd. The contractor, Herback General Engineering, will be performing some corrective paving work through the week.

To complete the paving operations, Herback will be resetting storm drain and sanitary sewer manholes to the new pavement finish grade, according to Stan Hill, associate civil engineer for the City.

Following the completion of the resetting of manholes, the contractor will start on pavement striping, snow pole marker installation, and road signs will be installed. Landscape planting and irrigation testing will continue through the month of October. Until the pavement striping is complete, sections of Sierra Blvd will be closed to through traffic during construction working hours, Hill said.

Following the completion of the pavement striping work, Sierra Boulevard will be reopened full time to through traffic.

The new crosswalks, turn lanes and traffic lights will be installed by the Caltrans contractor by the end of the month. When complete, the crosswalk at the western side of the intersection of US50 and Sierra Boulevard will be moved to the eastern side. This allows for the two new left-turn lanes from Sierra onto US50.