I believe that one of the greatest opportunities to positively impact overall quality of life is through the design of our built environment. I know that planning alone cannot make people choose to bike more often or choose to protect their natural resources. Still, I find great value in this work because a well-prepared plan makes those choices viable and inspires local leaders and residents to fulfill their own community vision. My job is to help them get from vision to plan to implementation, while guiding the process towards the end goal of creating healthy communities and healthy ecosystems.
Over the past decade, Jason Reyes has contributed to more than 70 planning and design projects for dozens of local governments, four state agencies, and the National Park Service. He served as project manager for 25 projects, including award-winning plans described below. Jason’s project history is almost entirely in the field of bicycle, pedestrian, and trail planning, but also covers natural and cultural resource conservation, corridor management planning, and urban sustainability elements for comprehensive plans.
Recent Projects
NCDOT Bicycle & Pedestrian Planning (NC)
Jason Reyes contributed significantly to bicycle and pedestrian plans for more than 20 separate North Carolina municipalities as part of NCDOT’s panning grant initiative over the last five years. Jason was the project manager for half of these projects, and also served as a facilitator, researcher, writer, graphic designer, and presenter for each project. Currently, he is contributing as a consultant to NCDOT for their Complete Streets Planning and Design Guidelines. For further information about these plans, see
www.ncdot.org/bikeped/planning.
Charleston County Greenbelt Plan (SC)
Jason co-authored the Comprehensive Greenbelt Plan for Charleston County, South Carolina (with Charles A. Flink, FASLA). They conducted a detailed greenspace inventory, needs assessment, and conservation strategy that will continue to be implemented over the next two decades. The plan recommends conserving more than 200,000 acres of greenspace through six component landscapes and building 200-miles of trails. The grant program that was developed out of the plan has already conserved hundreds of acres of greenspace with 25-years of dedicated sales tax funding totaling $221,571,200. This plan won the Outstanding Planning Award from the South Carolina Chapter of the American Planning Association. For more information about this project, visit the web site at
www.smallchangeforbigchange.org.
Raleigh 2030 Comprehensive Plan (NC)
Jason was the primary contributor to the Environmental Protection Element of the City of Raleigh’s 2030 Comprehensive Plan. Jason’s role in the planning effort was to examine and help formulate recommendations for urban sustainability, including resource conservation, land stewardship, energy efficiency, recycling and reuse, and reducing environmental impact.
Connecting Our Community (Allentown, PA)
Jason was the project manager and primary author of ‘Connecting Our Community’, a city-wide trails plan for Allentown, PA. The plan includes detailed project cut-sheets for approximately 18 miles of new trail and45 miles of on-street bicycle facilities. During the process, the plan’s workshops helped generate momentum for the formation of Bike Allentown, a local bicycle advocacy group. The City is currently implementing top priority recommendations.
