Tag: tiger

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Last chance to comment on plan to remove the Fresno Fulton Mall – act now!

On By jamesinclair

On December 3rd, at 1:30pm, the Fresno City Council will be presented with the last step of the process to eliminate the Fulton Mall and turn it into a street. They will vote on whether to award the contract or not to begin the destruction of the pedestrian mall.

At this point, the project is 11 months late and, more importantly, $3 million dollars over budget.

At $23.05 million, American Paving had the lowest of three bids for
the project. The other two bidders were Lewis C. Nelson at $23.3 million
and Granite Construction at $27.68 million. Right off , the city
is eliminating a bid alternative that will save around $600,000. That
takes American Paving’s bid to $22.4 million. The cash on hand for the
project – around $20 million – means City Hall now needs to either cut
around $2.4 million from the proposal or find some additional revenue.
It looks like the city isn’t counting on the latter. Click to read more!

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Central Valley misses out on TIGER grants, again

On By jamesinclair

On Friday, Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx announced the 2014 winners of the TIGER grant program. That program is handing out $600 million to 72 transportation projects.

California won some awards, but nothing for the Central Valley.

photo tiger_zpse97398ae.png
-Off topic – The placement of Puerto Rico on that map is very poor…

Anyway, as reported by Streetsblog, the program is quite competitive, with 797 applications and only 72 winners. In that context losing isn’t that much of a surprise…

Except that this is year 6. That’s six chances to win grants. How has the Central Valley fared? Click to read more!

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Fulton Mall Alternate Analysis Reports Available for Public Comment

On By jamesinclair

The city has used the Thanksgiving weekend to put up the massive “Alternate Analysis Report” for the Fulton Mall on their website. The choices of course, are to keep the mall, or to destroy it.

The public comment period runs until January 13.

It’s 382 pages of fun, so I haven’t made my way through it yet, but the folks at “Save the Fulton Mall” have pointed out something quite bothersome:

photo fultonmall_zps6c6454d7.jpg

That doesn’t make sense. The plan is to bulldoze a park and turn it into a standard road. That doesn’t have any aesthetic impacts? Turning a pedestrian mall into a street doesn’t have land use/planning impacts? It doesn’t affect recreation, transportation or traffic? Huh? The plan involves bulldozing playgrounds to add parking spaces, that by definition is an impact on recreation and transportation… Click to read more!

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The new FAX bus signs

On By jamesinclair

A few weeks ago I wrote about FAX taking out an ad in the Fresno Bee to promote new signs coming to bus stops. I thought it was absurd. The sign itself wasn’t very good, and the concept of a bus agency taking out an ad in the paper to tell people about a new sign was baffling.

There is some good news. Kiel Famellos-Schmidt of archop posted a picture of a new sign today and I was happy to see that large route numbers were included, even though the ads didn’t mention them.

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Where do those routes go? What is the service frequency? What are the service hours? Who knows, but at least the sign does do the bare minimum and inform people of the routes that stop there. Click to read more!