Fresno’s Scribbles Bike Path: A Master Plan for Active Transportation

The Fresno Scribbles Bike Path Master Plan, which represents a commitment to equitable active transportation and social infrastructure, is designed to enhance the quality of life for Fresno residents by providing safe, comfortable, and accessible biking and walking paths while promoting sustainability and fostering a sense of community. This report details the Intelligent Design Visualization Lab’s (IDVL) ongoing contribution to the Fresno City Scribbles Bike Campus initiative. This multifaceted urban intervention seeks to promote bike and pedestrian safety, enhance environmental resilience, and active transportation infrastructure through design, serving as a form of placemaking. In collaboration with the Fresno State Transportation Institute(FSTI) and in alignment with the Fresno County Regional Active Transportation Plan (FATP), the project focuses on two critical deliverables: the design development of eight educationally themed, district-specific bike shelters and the creation of a heat island mitigation design toolkit (which aims to reduce the impact of “heat islands” in which urban areas become significantly warmer than surrounding rural areas due to human activities and built environment), known as the Heat Island Design Toolkit(HIDT). Both efforts are grounded in health, safety, and well-being principles, as well as democratized design, environmental equity, social justice, and spatial agency. The gateway trailhead bike shelters are designed as contextual and functional complements to the cultural and architectural vernacular (styles) of the eight districts in the greater Fresno area. They are intended to support year-round use of the biking infrastructure by integrating amenities such as shade structures, charging stations, water access, and repair services. Parallel to this, the Heat Island Toolkit investigates and prototypes scalable strategies to reduce surface temperatures at gateway trailheads and along bike pathways. The mitigation strategies include community surveys, site-specific analysis, 3D renderings, and flythroughs of the sites. The master plan proposes a participatory framework that prioritizes distributed decision-making by engaging district residents through both in-person touchpoint stations and asynchronous digital tools for feedback. Findings from early survey data indicate district-level variation is preferred in heat mitigation design strategies, underscoring the need for localized design informed by community engagement. Ultimately, the initiative advances a public social infrastructure model highlighting safety, health and wellness, climate adaptation, and inclusive design processes. By merging technological exploration with grassroots engagement, the IDVL proposes an ecologically responsive, resilient, and socially oriented archetype for active transportation design in California’s Central Valley. These efforts promote bike and pedestrian use and safe, inclusive, equitable, and environmentally sound mobility.