Earth Date 2025 - California: What Fresno transportation could consist of

Rather than make predictions about Fresno’s transportation future, I am using this platform to discuss what transportation in the city of Fresno could look like 15 years down the road.

Where we are now

Unemployment is 18.5 percent. After reaching a peak, passenger vehicle use fell back slightly due to the effects of a sluggish economy. More and more people have turned to public transportation to meet their daily transportation needs. The San Joaquin Valley is ranked second worst in the nation with regard to air pollution.

Where we could be in 2025

For the college student living in Fresno attending University of California at Merced, the Monday thru Friday commute is a piece of cake. High-speed trains depart every 20 minutes from Fresno’s cavernous steel-and-glass-canopied downtown station. Arrival time in Merced is 12 minutes later. Meanwhile, rushing past the station periodically going both north and south are express high-speed trains originating in Los Angeles and San Francisco, respectively. Available are monthly and weekly ticket packages as well as tickets sold for daily use. All tickets are purchased electronically and printed out in the home, workplace, at the grocery store, at the corner coffee shop; basically anywhere a fax machine is accessible, and even in the private passenger vehicle. (I became aware of that last potentiality from the Blueprint America episode on PBS called: “Beyond the Motor City”).

With high-speed rail a fixture in the Valley for five years now, Valley-wide, high-speed rail now has 30 percent of the intercity travel market share. Twenty-five percent of the intercity traveling public relies on air travel to meet those needs and 40 percent travel by private passenger vehicle. Filling out the remaining five percent is bus and conventional passenger train use.

Getting around in the city itself has become a whole lot more flexible compared to what was characteristic a decade-and-a-half earlier (2010). Besides the multitude of public transit modes available (i.e., transit bus, bus rapid transit, personal rapid transit (at Fresno State), light rail transit, downtown streetcar and car-sharing service), there are cars of every description. Even bicycle use and walking are way up.

For all those going to Fresno Yosemite International Airport, access to and from the airport terminal is via taxi-cab, shuttle van, transit bus, light rail train and, of course, the old standby – the driver-owned or leased automobile. The same holds true for travel to and from the downtown high-speed train station with the addition of bus rapid transit or BRT and the downtown streetcar. For those traveling from say Hanford and other points south of Fresno or from Madera and various points north, Amtrak access to and from Fresno is still available. An easy transfer to streetcar at the Amtrak station enables out-of-town fans to attend Grizzlies baseball games for instance, access of course from the downtown HSR station just across the street incidentally, which, if you remember, is served by streetcar. There is no need to worry about finding a parking spot downtown and paying a parking fee. Those traveling from elsewhere in the city can park at a park-and-ride lot at one of the many light rail train stations.

Fresno City College and California State University, Fresno, are each served by transit bus, rapid transit bus, light rail transit and in the case of FCC, by downtown streetcar also (the northern end of the line). In fact, running in the medians of Highways 41, 168 and 180 is Fresno’s expansive light rail transit system dubbed LF for “Lightspeed Fresno.” The major shopping malls, academic institutions, medical facilities, business, financial and industrial centers are all accessed.

A preponderance of automobiles are now powered by batteries and battery change-out or changing stations are as mainstream as gas stations. In fact, there are some gas stations that handle battery change-outs and dispense gasoline. There are full-service and self-service for both. Carpooling is about the same as what it was in 2010.

At this point, you should have a better feel for what the transportation scene in Fresno – and the Valley – could look like in year 2025. Will what I put down in print here characterize what Fresno transportation consists of 15 years into the future or will it be strikingly similar to what exists now? Care to make any predictions?