Month: January 2020

Fresno City College Axes Free Bus Passes, Celebrates $18m Parking Garage

Last week, at the bottom of a newsletter, FAX dropped the bombshell that students at Fresno City College would no longer enjoy free rides on local bus routes.

In 2017, when the program was initiated, officials boasted that it would ease parking concerns, help students save money, and decrease emissions.

Apparently, those concerns no longer matter. According to State Center Community College District Vice Chancellor Christine Miktarian:

“Parking revenue is supposed to be paying for the maintenance of our parking lots, and so since we’ve been using bus passes, we have been not doing the maintenance we should have been for the last couple years,” says Click to read more!

Clovis is getting a new roundabout

At the request of Caltrans, Clovis will be converting a signalized intersection at Temperance and Alluvial into a roundabout this year.

State Department of Transportations love roundabouts. Unlike traffic signals, roundabouts allow for a continuous flow of traffic, which the highway folks love, especially near major freeways. That’s because traffic signals can cause traffic on highways to back up past the exit lane into the general highway. A couple of years ago, most of the exits along CA-41 in Fresno were widened because this was happening.

Here’s a road north of Albany, NY, where the highway folks went roundabout crazy. Click to read more!

Fresno Eliminates All-Door Boarding on “BRT” Route

A small announcement appeared on the FAX website last week: fareboxes are being added to buses on Route 1 (Q) and all-door boarding is being eliminated.

Fareboxes will soon be installed on Route 1 – BRT buses.  Once installed, passengers must board through the front door and use the farebox to: Pay in cash, Validate ride cards, or Activate passes 

FAX

On Twitter, I confirmed with the agency that all-door boarding will end, even for those who choose to pay at the machines.

Pre-payment and all-door boarding was one of the only “BRT” features that hadn’t yet been eliminated. As a reminder: Click to read more!