Fruitridge Road alternatives presented: staff weighs half vs. full road diets, model shows displacement risk near 99 interchange

City staff and consultants presented design alternatives and traffic forecasts for the Fruitridge Road safety and mobility plan at the Active Transportation Commission meeting on June 18, 2026. The plan covers roughly four miles of Fruitridge Road from Riverside Boulevard to Stockton Boulevard and seeks to improve safety and multimodal access on a corridor that the city identified as a Vision Zero top‑10 priority.

Virginia Morgan, associate planner, summarized Phase 1 engagement and described three draft alternatives that staff will seek public feedback on during a follow-up in‑person workshop on July 6 and an online survey running through mid‑July. Consultant Adrian (Ferron Pierce) presented traffic-forecasting results: about 38 percent of Fruitridge traffic is through‑traffic (not beginning or ending in the corridor’s catchment), existing counts of about 20,000–25,000 vehicles per day on the western end and about 30,000–37,000 on the eastern end, and modeled impacts for three scenarios (2040 general plan baseline, half road diet, and a full road diet).

Under the half‑road‑diet scenario (previously approved in the general plan for the western half), model results show modest reductions on the western segment and small changes on the east. Under a full road diet the model showed larger reductions along Fruitridge — described as decreases between roughly 5,000 and 19,000 trips in constrained areas — with corresponding modeled increases on nearby arterials and interchanges, particularly near the SR‑99 and I‑5 interchanges. Adrian said the team will include additional figures in the traffic study that show absolute volumes alongside percentage changes to avoid overinterpreting large percentage increases on links that represent low base volumes.

Commissioners asked whether adjacent corridors (for example, the 99 interchange and 47th Avenue) will receive follow‑up study if traffic is displaced; staff said those corridors are not currently on the transportation priorities list but could be added depending on project outcomes, while noting interchange reconstruction would be expensive. Commissioners also questioned bike-lane widths in constrained sections; staff said the city standard for separated bikeways is an 8-foot width to accommodate sweepers, but constrained locations might show narrower temporary pavement solutions and detailed design will seek larger widths where feasible.

Other discussion addressed funding (grant reliance), right‑of‑way limits in some sections, potential utility relocation, and equity concerns that costlier treatments may be harder to implement in less‑resourced neighborhoods. Staff said alternatives will be refined with community feedback and additional technical analysis prior to returning to the commission.