According to the city’s Vision Zero page, the city saw around 500 fatal or serious crashes from 2018 through 2022, with 127 pedestrians killed by cars.
In late March, Fresno County Supervisor Luis Chavez walked around the block of Calwa Elementary School, examining crosswalks, streets and sidewalks as part of a county effort to improve student pedestrian safety around schools.
Chavez has represented the Calwa area since 2016 — first on the Fresno City Council and now on the Board of Supervisors.
“I can tell you that from the number of town hall meetings that I had working with our stakeholders, the schools, the churches, the nonprofits that do work here in their community, that the number one issue [is] the pedestrian safety,” Chavez said.
Chavez said that, during the past five years, at least a dozen pedestrians, including some children, have been struck by cars at Jensen and Cedar Avenues.
The Calwa intersection is just one example of the chronic pedestrian, bicycle and traffic-safety issues that have plagued Fresno and fueled its climb to one of the 10 most dangerous metro areas in the nation.
Fresno’s current ranking is preceded by a history of rising pedestrian deaths going back as far as 2013.
Fresno ranked seventh most dangerous metro for pedestrians
According to the city’s Vision Zero page, the city saw around 500 fatal or serious crashes from 2018 through 2022, with 127 pedestrians killed by cars.
Smart Growth America, a nonprofit organization based in Washington which ranked Fresno No. 7 nationally in its list of most dangerous metro areas, lists 196 pedestrian deaths in Fresno County over the same time period.
And it’s only gotten worse in Fresno over the past decade. The county’s ranking climbed from the 21st worst metro in 2021, according to data analyzed by Smart Growth America, when there were 111 pedestrian fatalities from 2013 through 2017.
Pedestrian deaths locally are concentrated on major streets like Shaw Avenue and Blackstone Avenue, where 22 and 20 pedestrians have been killed by cars, respectively, according to an interactive map with data from 2008-2022.
Edna Pedroza, chair of the Fresno County Bicycle Coalition, said travelling through Fresno by foot or bike “often feels like you’re invisible.”
“You’re sharing roads designed almost exclusively for cars, with little buffer or protection; drivers frequently speed, crosswalks can be poorly marked or spaced far apart, and bike lanes—where they exist—are often narrow or blocked by parked cars or debris,” Pedroza said.
City works towards vision with no pedestrian fatalities
Vision Zero is an alternative traffic solution strategy that proposes to completely eliminate traffic deaths. Starting in Sweden during the 1990s, it differs from the traditional approach to traffic safety which has typically accepted that collisions are an inevitability and works to decrease the severity of these crashes.
In 2023, the City of Fresno received a $400,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Transportation to develop a Vision Zero Action Plan, with the city council adding an additional $100,000. However, conversations about bringing Vision Zero to Fresno started as early as 2020.
“During the pandemic we were discussing safe streets [and] at some point, people connected to [the city’s bike and pedestrian committee] brought up the idea of Vision Zero,” said Laura Gromis, the current chair of the city’s Active Transportation Advisory Committee.
“It’s been a couple of years that we’ve been talking about it, learning about it, and working through [the committee] with public works as well as [the city] council to bring Vision Zero to Fresno”
According to Gromis, a consultant team is working to analyze collisions and current traffic policies while also conducting community outreach and identifying potential safety projects.
Gromis said they hope to wrap up the process by the end of the year and explained that the plan’s development also includes creating a traffic calming toolkit, new policies and programs, an educational toolkit and a data dashboard for the plan.
The plan’s proposed improvements are also independent of the city’s Active Transportation Plan and its own improvements to bike lanes and construction of walkable trails.
On the county side, its “Safe Streets for Students” program started in March with walking audits around fifteen schools in the county. The program’s goal is to eventually create a plan to improve traffic safety around the participating schools using policy, engineering and program strategies.
Residents on the city edge
For some residents, the planned improvements to pedestrian safety seem far away when basic infrastructure like sidewalks are still missing.
Residents near the city and county border, like those who live by Addams Elementary School, face a unique dilemma: The county and the city may not always coordinate road work to be uniform across the city/county limit, and where some streets may see improvement, another may not because of the separation between county and city boundaries.
Crystal Peralta, executive director of community nonprofit Jane Addams CDC, says residents have voiced concerns to the Fresno County Board of Supervisors. While there are initiatives from the county to improve safety around schools, the greater area near the city edge still lacks basic sidewalks and street lighting.
Peralta explained that the lack of sidewalks in the area makes it difficult to traverse the streets safely and eliminates the possibility of students biking to school. The problem is further compounded when rain causes flooding and with the presence of homeless encampments along the area.
“Parents are starting to come out and realize that ‘We need to make some noise, because nothing is happening here,’ and they are seeing changes that are happening in other places,” Peralta said.
“It’s upsetting because they’re feeling like ‘why are we being left behind?’”
Otilia Ortigoza, a resident and mother of two who has lived in the area for a decade, says that while bus transportation does exist for students, those who live near the school aren’t able to ride and are forced to walk to school if parents are working.
Ortigoza also said that while changes like decreasing the speed limit and road narrowings could help to make streets safer, installing basic infrastructure like street lights and sidewalks would help more than anything.
“What I want is for the roads to be fixed, for sidewalks and streetlights to be installed, and if it’s possible, a park,” said Ortigoza.
“For most families who live in this area, the parents work in the fields and lamentably, sometimes we have to send our kids walking to school,” Ortigoza added.
Conversations about the inconsistency between the city and county’s coordination on improving traffic infrastructure are not new. The topic arose during the negotiations of the city-county tax-sharing agreement late last year.
How Fresnans can get involved in pedestrian safety
Joe Martinez, a resident of Fresno, lost his son Paul Martinez in 2013. Paul was struck and killed near Clinton and San Pablo in Fresno, and his father became an advocate for safer streets ever since.
Specifically, Martinez became affiliated with Families for Safe Streets, an organization that advocates for legislation to make streets safer on the state and local level. The organization is composed of members who’ve lost loved ones to crashes or have been affected or care for a person injured by traffic violence.
Now, Martinez is hoping to get a chapter open in Fresno.
“I felt it necessary that [Fresno] have its own chapter for the purpose of being a voice for families impacted by traffic violence, as well as being a support to families who have lost loved ones, because currently there is no support system in place for these families,” Martinez said.
Martinez previously served on the city’s Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Committee (BPAC) and was part of the initial conversations to bring Vision Zero to Fresno. Now with the plan in development, Martinez says it’s vital that the improvements are felt everywhere in the city.
“It’s important that we hear back from the communities, especially communities who’ve been left out, disenfranchised, marginalized, who haven’t been able to participate or have access to to these types of improvements,” Martinez said,
Tony Molina, who also previously served on the city’s BPAC committee around the same time as Martinez, is now involved with the bicycle coalition. In March, the coalition hosted a Vision Zero bike ride and bike giveaway, with Molina leading riders along Barstow Avenue to teach them about safe cycling in Fresno.
“The bicycle coalition offers bicycle safety education; we teach a course called smart cycling, and we are training more bicycle educators to help bicyclists drive their bicycles in a safer manner,” Molina said.
On top of teaching safe cycling, the coalition hosts monthly bike repair stations to teach residents how to fix their bikes.
Molina also mentioned that while budget cuts at the federal level have raised concerns over the implementation of Vision Zero and other traffic projects, he remains hopeful that the city will continue to budget for pedestrian safety.
“We’ve been working at this for many years; the pendulum swings from time to time, so we hope that in the long term for active transportation, we’re hoping that reason will triumph,” Molina said.
To get involved in the city’s Vision Zero efforts, you can attend a community learning and listening workshop on Thursday, Jun. 5 from 3:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. at Fresno City College, OAB 251.
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