Beating the heat: students design innovative bus shelters for triple-digit summers

Have you ever smelled summer? That smell of burnt—it’s not even clear what, just burnt. A parched breath of stale atmosphere and smog. If you live here, you know. Fresno summers are notorious. It’s a months-long slog, an endurance test, with temperatures regularly reaching triple digits for weeks at a time. 

Spending as little time as possible under the afternoon sun, many dash from indoor air-conditioning to air-conditioned vehicles as the heat from the softened black asphalt radiates through their shoes. Peer-reviewed studies have shown that as people drive in their air-conditioned cars, the heat and pollution emissions of those cars can increase the temperature in the cities even further, making the problem worse. 

Still, according to the Fresno Area Express (FAX), about 40,300 people ride the bus every day. They walk out to the bus stop, and then wait for up to 20 minutes for a bus at a stop that may only be shaded for a couple of hours a day, and sometimes not at all. 

For Fresno State interior design students, the problem is clear. If public transportation is to not only be safe, but to move beyond a need and become a choice, shade is necessary. 

“We designed these shelters for all four cardinal points, and then we analyzed the design. Every day of the year, we ran solar analysis to see how large our shade spread could be,” said Holly Sowles, associate professor of interior design and chair of the School of Art, Design and Art History. 

In the summer of 2024, through the Fresno State Transportation Institute, Sowles, Assistant Professor Uris Giron, five interior design and four architectural students with the Lyles College of Engineering began working with the City of Fresno to design innovative shade solutions for FAX bus stops.

“We did research, case studies of different bus shelters that have been done before, just to get some ideas,” said Jachelle Jimenez, an interior design student. “Then we talked about it like what’s good, but we like what works and what doesn’t work.”

The students started with sketches on paper. With regular feedback from the FAX officials, the designs evolved into functional and beautiful designs. 

There were many design challenges to overcome. First, of course, was the lack of shade, especially for stops where the sidewalk was too narrow for traditional shade structures. Additionally, students were constrained by codes and regulations, such as accessibility requirements and clearance for pedestrians.

“You have to have a minimum of four feet back from the edge of the curb. That had to be unobstructed just for people to be able to pass through, and it couldn’t be all the way to the back of the sidewalk,” said Lee Miyamoto, an interior design student. “It had to be below a certain height, but high enough where people couldn’t jump up and hang off of it. So really kind of like almost contradicting codes, and especially for the small site.”

They also designed the structures with ease of maintenance and installation in mind. While traditional bus shelters are often brought in one piece and installed with a crane, these designs allow for smaller crews and equipment.

“Every portion or piece of the bus stops can basically be screwed on and off. They come in multiple pieces, and the maintenance guys can just bring them in on their pickup trucks, and they can just simply replace the components,” said Sowles.

The modular designs also allow for easy expansion as more people use the bus. 

As their designs solidified, they moved from paper sketches to computer drawings using advanced software like Autodesk Revit for design, solar analysis and rendering and Enscape to create flythroughs and virtual environments. 

Then, in February, students brought their poster presentations with three-dimensional renderings and three-dimensional printed scale models, and even virtual reality environments, to Fresno City Hall for a special public presentation. 

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The afternoon began with students presenting on a large screen in the Fresno City Council Chambers. In front of the Mayor, FAX representatives and other dignitaries, each student talked about their designs, each with different designs for different street orientations. 

After the presentations, the students and the small crowd moved to the foyer outside the chambers to examine 3D-printed models of the designs and experience them in a virtual space. The audience then voted for their favorite designs in each directional (north, south, east, west) orientation and one universal orientation design.  In the end, five designs were chosen to move forward.

“They technically would like to have all of them, but we need to move forward from the model design concept to design documentation,” said Sowles. “The city is now exploring the implementation of the winning designs.”

The next steps include the designs being signed off by a licensed engineer, prototyping of the designs and finally, installing the new bus stops around the city.