Anyone who has an interest is the future of Fresno's streets should remember this name: Oliver Baines.

The council member who represents District 3 has single-handedly changed the public debate on road diets and bicycle lanes in Fresno.

The Public Works Department has been trying for several months to add bicycle lanes to the section of Fresno Street between California Avenue on the southwest and C Street on the northeast.

This is an interesting stretch of Fresno Street.

From C Street to A Street, you've got lots of businesses on both sides. For example, the Kearney Palms shopping center is in this area. Onramps and offramps for Highway 99 are just on the other side of C Street.

You get the picture -- it's a very busy here. Lots of car traffic. Lots of shoppers. It's a good thing Fresno Street is four lanes.

Fresno Street changes dramatically when you get to A Street. This is also is the spot where Kearney Boulevard angles into Fresno Street.

To stand at A Street and look down the length of Fresno Street toward California Avenue is to view one of our city's best kept secrets. It's a beautiful street. Tall, majestic trees line both sides. Most of the homes are old and well-maintained. Things are clean. The car traffic thins out, so the four lanes give cars plenty of room to move along at a leisurely (for the most part) pace.

Theo Kearney would've had no problem attracting East Coasters and Europeans to his grand vision for our region if he'd sent them postcards of this stretch of modern-day Fresno Street.

Here's a photo of what I'm talking about, taken at about A Street, looking toward California Avenue.

Now, just to back up a bit, let's talk about bike lanes. City Hall for the past several years has been mad for bike lanes. City officials want people to get out of their cars, get exercise, slim down, spare the air.

According to the 2000 Census, not even 1% of Fresnans used a bicycle as their primary means of commuting to work. City Hall wants to get that total up to 5%.

City Hall at the end of 2010 had 113 miles of bicycle lanes. A bike lane is just what it sounds like -- a lane on the side of the street that's designated by parallel white stripes.
City Hall wants to create about 30 miles of bike lanes per year until the city has at least 600 miles of bike lanes. If I recall correctly my chatter with Public Works officials, Fresno has about 3,000 miles of city-owned surface streets.

Bottom line -- Fresno will soon be full of bike lanes.

But City Hall faces several challenges, and I'm not talking about money.

For starters, you don't have to be a scientist to know that Fresno isn't a big bicycle town. We're not leafy Davis, full of college students and professors.

Fresno is a sprawling place -- more than 100 square miles in size.

And to create a bicycle lane, City Hall almost always has to put the street on a road diet. If the street is two lanes each direction, it might be reduced to three lanes, one each direction with a turn lane in the middle. Or, instead of two lanes in each direction, you might get only one lane in each direction.

Public Works does this by hiring a contractor who resurfaces the street with a slurry seal. This enables crews to reconfigure the stripes that outline the car lanes. This also enables crews to add stripes that identify the new bike lanes.

The result is obvious: Car traffic has less room, while bicycle traffic has more room. This in a city with lots of cars and not many bicyclists.

The interesting thing is that, for the most part, Fresnans have passively accepted this rather remarkable and long-term effort at social engineering (though city officials insist what they're doing is NOT social engineering). Bike-lane projects don't generate any push-back from council members or their constituents.

Then again, perhaps most constituents don't know what's going to happen on their favorite street until it's too late.

But that changed this summer when Public Works had a consent calendar item to add bike lanes on Fresno Street from California Avenue to C Street. There was enough room, city officials said, to add the bike lanes from C to A streets without a road diet. But Fresno Street from A Street to California Avenue would be subjected to a road diet. That stretch would go from four lanes to two lanes.

Baines pushed back. He was careful about how he did it. He didn't raise a stink. He merely asked that the request from Public Works be briefly postponed so he could discuss things with his constituents.

The Fresno Street road diet was postponed. Then it came back later in the summer.
Again, Baines asked for a bit more time. He wanted feedback from his constituents. He planned on holding a community meeting to get the feedback.

"I didn't want them to wake up one morning, find two lanes gone, and say, 'What happened?'" Baines told me.

Baines emphasized that he's not against bike lanes.

One afternoon a few weeks ago, I walked Fresno Street between A Street and California Avenue. I spoke with more than a dozen people who live, work and shop along that stretch.

Each of them essentially said the same thing: Road diet? No way. Put City Hall on the diet. Leave our street as is.

I saw one bicyclist on my walk. It was kid. He was riding on the sidewalk.

City officials said they don't know how many bicyclists use this stretch of Fresno Street. They said about 6,000 cars a day use its four lanes. They said this stretch of Fresno Street needs only two lanes. They said two lanes can handle 20,000 cars a day without harming the neighborhood's quality of life.

The Fresno Street road diet remained in the pipeline, but its timeline was uncertain. Baines remained committed to a community meeting, but its timeline also was uncertain.

That all changed yesterday (Thursday, Oct. 27). Public Works officials told the council that they were postponing the Fresno Street road diet between A Street and California Avenue until at least next spring. They said wet weather is just around the corner, and a slurry seal doesn't take unless there's hot weather.

The officials said Fresno Street between C Street and A street would still get the bike lanes, but there's enough room there to keep all four lanes. The officials also said they hope to get a lower bid next spring for the road-diet project on Fresno Street between A Street and California Avenue.

Of course, that depends on whether the City Council next spring approves the project.

And here is where Baines has changed the political landscape at City Hall for road diets.

He's finally going to have his community meeting. It's scheduled for Tuesday, Nov. 8 at 5:30 p.m. at Edison High School.

Anybody from District 3 can go there and give Baines their opinion about road diets and bike lanes in their neighborhood.

Baines will have those opinions with him when the Fresno Street road diet returns to the City Council next spring.

I'm guessing the other six council members will pay attention to what Baines is doing for his constituents. And I'm guessing those other six council members will consider it wise to give their constituents the same opportunities that Baines is giving the people who voted him into office.

Bike lanes and road diets apparently are Fresno's future. But I doubt if Fresnans and their council members will ever again be as passive about the political process that makes bike lanes and road diets a reality in their neighborhoods.

If I'm right, Fresno can thank Oliver Baines.