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43 min. Video Course | Quiz | Certificate of Completion
Atlanta has the Beltline, New York the Highline. But even more ambitious than these is the D/FW area’s Regional Veloweb. Linking Dallas and Fort Worth, and many other cities throughout the greater metroplex, this regional network ultimately links more than seven million residents of the area together.
Conceived decades ago, it has slowly gained momentum, and now is poised to finally link the two cities together. In this session, speakers Lenny Hughes and Bud Melton document the history of the Veloweb, its many challenges, and ultimately how it is all coming together. A panel comprised of those who have long advocated for it, and others in local government who have helped fund it will tell us about the challenges and obstacles that had to be overcome, and how this grand vision can help transform the Dallas/Fort Worth region.
Learning Objectives:
- Summarize obstacles and challenges, at many levels, faced by this visionary plan.
- Identify strategies to help develop the pieces of the system and ultimately link them together.
- Recognize key ingredients from this project that may exist in participants’ communities and regions.
Speakers
Lenny Hughes, Vice President, Director, Halff Associates
Mr. Hughes, Vice President and Director of Urban Planning and Design, joined Halff Associates in 1995. Lenny has more than 24 years of experience in urban planning and design, landscape architectural design, active transportation planning and an extensive background in visioning, community planning and public engagement. Lenny has helped shape the growth and development of communities across the state of Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana and Arkansas, leading trail planning and design, public outreach and urban planning efforts for large mainstream markets to small rural communities. His client base includes the City’s of Dallas, Fort Worth, Plano, McKinney, Frisco, Oklahoma City, OK, Norman, OK, Collin, Denton and Dallas County, TxDOT/LaDOT/ODOT, USACE, NCTCOG, DART, and a multitude of municipalities across the Dallas-Ft. Worth Metroplex and state of Texas and Oklahoma.
Mr. Hughes has developed a high level of experience in Trail Planning and Design with more than 100 miles of built trails and has successfully written and received more than $100M in Federal, State and Local Grants within the last ten years. He is committed to all issues of trail planning and design, understanding the need for safe, creative, yet sustainable development. Mr. Hughes strives to work in a partnership with his clients, ensuring that the design and construction is customized to meet their needs as each project is unique.
Bud Melton, Special Projects, Halff Associates
After more than 20 years as a sub-consultant to Halff, Bud Melton brings new perspectives in active-transportation infrastructure, urban planning and urban design to Halff’s planning and landscape architecture division. He is an urban planner and lifelong advocate for active transportation.
During his previous 20-plus year career as owner of a nationally-acclaimed bicycle dealership, Bud spearheaded the conversion of an abandoned MKT rail right-of-way to what’s become one of the Dallas park department’s foremost civic spaces.
During the early ’90s, he secured both regional and county funding for design and construction, and soon-after reinvented himself as a bicycle and pedestrian planning specialist and joined his wife Annie’s transportation consulting firm, Bowman-Melton Associates (BMA). In that role since 1995, he’s managed scores of large-scale bikeway, trail and transit-oriented development (TOD) planning and design projects, and assisted dozens of Texas cities plus several counties with concept development, master planning, funding partnerships and design assistance. He is expert at finding innovative creative solutions to complex problems, and has achieved unprecedented success with stakeholder buy-in.
Bud has devoted decades to helping shape the 4-plus county regional North Central Texas ‘Veloweb’ – an interconnected network of greenway trails and bikeways defined in the region’s long-range mobility plan. During the mid-nineties, he served on the IH 635 LBJ Freeway Executive Board to ensure bicycle and pedestrian permeability along the 15-mile corridor re-do, the most significant of which was the Cottonwood Creek Trail beneath the High Five interchange.
