Convergence of spherical averages for actions of Fuchsian groups

Pointwise convergence of spherical averages is proved for a measure-preserving action of a Fuchsian group. The proof is based on a new variant of the Bowen-Series symbolic coding for Fuchsian groups that, developing a method introduced by Wroten, simultaneously encodes all possible shortest paths representing a given group element. The resulting coding is self-inverse, giving a reversible Markov chain to which methods previously introduced by the first author for the case of free groups may be applied.