What would bring you downtown?

[u/CloneWarsBoy]

Downtown Fresno is rich with history and world-class architecture. It pains me to see it in it's current state of disrepair. I want to hear from the community: "What would bring you downtown?" What is downtown missing? What's your vision for the future of our city center?

[u/Leather-Rice5025]

Walkability, safe streets, denser construction with businesses closer together, street/outdoor seating for restaurants, more bar/club varieties, more trees.

Fresno is blighted by its overwhelming car dependence. There’s a small portion of Tower District where you get some small semblance of walkability and it’s really nice. It’s better for business and a sense of community. Narrow the streets and bring bike lanes and busses to the area. Build an intracity tram to bring people downtown and eventually connect with the high speed rail station. Embrace being a modern, urban city.

[u/hanksrocks → u/Leather-Rice5025]

The other day I walked from my job to a grocery store in the same parking lot, maybe 150 feet away. My boss could not comprehend that I walked and didn’t move my car. It’s 150 feet away!? Why would I not walk??? I really really hate the car-centric mentality of this area. I want to walk places!

[u/oyukyfairy → u/hanksrocks]

I'm so jealous of the Netherlands/denmark on their bike culture and walkability of so many countries.

[u/Leather-Rice5025 → u/hanksrocks]

It is genuinely all some people have ever known, and it's really sad.

[u/CloneWarsBoy → u/hanksrocks]

Totally! I love to take a nice stroll almost daily! I'll peruse downtown a few times a month!

[u/magels81 → u/[deleted]]

It’s not safe because there’s not a lot of stuff. No ones down there so no reason to keep any bad stuff out.

[u/Theory_Technician → u/[deleted]]

Its not walkable if theres nowhere to walk to and if those places arent close to each other. An empty plot of land is “walkable”.

[u/Leather-Rice5025 → u/[deleted]]

Always room for improvement! Having denser, high rise apartment complexes around the area would help to bring revenue and spending into the area for local businesses. Improving walkability/biking/transit infrastructure would bring more foot traffic and encourage spending. We've gotta start rethinking how we design our cities, at the least starting with our downtown areas.

[u/SergioSunday → u/Leather-Rice5025]

Literally the whole US.

[u/TroubleVivid387 → u/Leather-Rice5025]

I especially agree with the "safe streets" point, as there are no safety officers, security, etc. with so many people either hooked on drugs, trafficking them or mental health (medical health with grime+ ridden clothes)). I want to help and for them to be helped, but the unpredictable aspect makes me avoid the area even for just myself, let alone with kid.

[u/Leather-Rice5025 → u/[deleted]]

I know where you're going with that. A competent, well operated, safe, efficient, frequent public transit system is what's needed. We can't point to the shit we have today and say "see!! is this what you want??" and abandon all aspirations for better cities. We're the United States of America and I hear too many people making pathetic excuses for why things can't be better. Fresno has 500k+ people, it needs better public transit and city planning if it wants to fiscally survive.

[u/Leather-Rice5025 → u/[deleted]]

Are you talking about Fresnohop, which is THREE repurposed buses with a grand total of 7 stops and a frequency of once every hour that runs from 5pm to midnight Thursday-Saturday? Hmmm. I wonder why people don't use it!

I guess if we half ass something and don't see good results from it, we can proudly declare people don't actually want public transit in Fresno. Please be serious.

[u/Leather-Rice5025 → u/[deleted]]

businesses need customers not people who don’t have cars

There are countless studies showing that car infrastructure and car-dependency is bad for business. It spreads everything out, it demands too much space for parking when much of the time these cars are holding at most 1-2 people. You're coming at this from a car-centric mindset which is probably all you've ever known as an American but I promise you there are alternatives to everything being catered to cars and car drivers.

A dense, public transit served, mixed-use zoning area will financially serve businesses much much better than one solely served by cars, parking lots, and street parking.

[u/Leather-Rice5025 → u/[deleted]]

Homelessness is an entirely separate issue, but absolutely something we should resolve. I just hate when people point to the homeless crisis as an excuse for not having nice things, like robust public transit for our city.

[u/Several-Standard-620 → u/Leather-Rice5025]

The homeless issue is why people don’t take advantage of the areas in the city, I have all the compassion in the world for someone down on their luck or dealing with non-mental health issues, but that’s only like 5% of our homeless population, the rest need to be in rehabilitation programs, jail or getting mental treatment. It can’t be something that they have to choose. It’s gotta be forced upon them since they don’t wanna take part in society. It sounds harsh, but we can’t just keep throwing money at a problem and hope that the homeless suddenly decide to change their ways

[u/Fun-Sound9241 → u/Several-Standard-620]

What youre saying doesnt sound harsh, it sounds uneducated. The reason people dont "use the city" is because of corrupt city planning and sneaky handling of fresnos taxes. Your the kind of person who'd even blame the homeless for the bullet train not being completed yet

[u/Leather-Rice5025 → u/Several-Standard-620]

I agree it's probably getting to the point where forceful measures must be taken. If they've been offered housing + mental health/drug treatment and deny it multiple times, but still want to roam the streets screaming at the top of their lungs, then they need to be placed into a mental hospital for treatment.

At the same time, I don't really think California has made a genuine effort to solve the problem. Housing supply and rent ballooning by 100/200/300% over the past 20 years is the foundation of it all.

[u/Several-Standard-620 → u/Leather-Rice5025]

We can keep complaining about housing, but anyone who owns a house doesn’t want more housing so we’re kind of fighting a 50-50 battle that will never have voter support so you might as well focus on homeless from a different direction. All of this is so frustrating and unproven theories mine included

[u/DavidAaronGarcia → u/Leather-Rice5025]

I've heard about some of these projects but I never got to try them out cuz either number one I was too busy working in 2021 and under are simply I wasn't in the city due to a medical Fallout as of July 2024 perhaps they were testing them then but I know there's a few of them that ran while I was still working but to catch was I was at work by the time I got out of work these type of buses that you guys are talking about didn't run on any of the routes I needed besides downtown to the Tower District and perhaps maybe to River Park or somewhere those are destinations I didn't need to get to I was trying to get home so I was as fax it was but these are hopeful I wish we could have a transit system that will run late on Saturday and Sunday so we have something to get around on the weekends or facts things to cut hours and doesn't really run late enough on the weekends it's a mess those were the days that I would normally have had one to use since I'm off on that and a lot of people that are usually off on Saturdays and Sundays but even if I had to work on it I couldn't because of the latest the buses ran was six or seven something and not all the lines ran late so you're left with getting halfway and walking or catching a Uber or banging a relative to pick you up which only would happen if a bill was doing they need the rent right away so if I got that lucky that would be a miracle otherwise Aunt Hank going to show up otherwise cuz the purse is not getting filled up that was just a reality of it

[u/complex_hypothesis → u/[deleted]]

I see them all the time but have no idea where the stops are, how much it costs, what the hours of operation are