Transportation Team Puts Fresno’s Chestnut Avenue on a Road Diet

CLOVIS, CA: Our transportation service sector has been fast at work on a wide variety of transportation projects, including our first full Traffic Impact Study, numerous Trip Generation memos, and design of roadway rehabilitation and trail projects.

One of those projects is the Chestnut Avenue Rehabilitation, designed for the City of Fresno. The project rehabilitated a one-mile-long stretch of pavement, replaced 30 curb ramps to bring them up to current accessibility standards, upgraded the existing pedestrian push buttons with audible signals, and included a major restriping design.

The restriping design included what’s known as a “road diet”, as shown in the image above. Despite reducing the number of through lanes, road diets actually reduce overall traffic delay and increase safety by moving left turn movements into their own dedicated lane. The additional space created by the road diet allows for the addition of bike lanes on either side of the road.

To promote bicycle awareness and safety, the City of Fresno has adopted new bike lane standards that provide enhanced striping across vehicle conflict areas near intersections. These enhanced features include high visibility green paint, additional bike symbols, and broken bike lane extensions across right turn lane entrances and minor intersections. Our work on Chestnut Avenue showcases many of these features that will be included in future City of Fresno roadway projects.