Trail Planning & Active Transportation Consulting
We bring planning expertise, spatial analysis, and community knowledge to the work of turning active transportation goals into coherent, connected systems.
What we do
We work with municipalities, nonprofits, and grant-funded organizations across North Carolina to plan active transportation networks worth building.
Rigorous analysis of opportunities, constraints, and community context, giving decision-makers the evidence they need to move forward with confidence.
Spatial analysis and network-level thinking that reveals how individual projects fit into and strengthen the broader active transportation system.
Evaluation of existing plans, codes, and standards to identify gaps and opportunities, with practical recommendations grounded in real-world implementation.
Community engagement and multi-stakeholder facilitation that builds alignment around shared goals, available as an add-on to planning and study projects.
Specialized expertise in natural surface and off-road trail planning, a credible and evidence-based approach to a resource that municipalities increasingly need help with.
Independent review of trail and active transportation design documents, with an eye toward constructability, user experience, and long-term maintenance needs.
About
"The best trail networks I've seen were built by communities that treated natural surface trails as transportation, not just recreation."
Pathfinder Planning + Design is the practice of Jason [Last Name], a planner, advocate, and elected official based in the Triangle region of North Carolina. The practice grew directly out of years of on-the-ground involvement with TORC (Triangle Off-Road Cyclists), Bike Durham, and academic research on how natural surface trails fit into urban transportation systems.
That combination of advocacy experience, academic rigor, and elected office isn't common in the consulting world. It shapes how Pathfinder works: we bring community relationships, planning expertise, and hard-won credibility to every project, not just deliverables.
Get in touch
Whether you're scoping a feasibility study, working through a network planning challenge, or trying to figure out whether a project is fundable, we're happy to have an early conversation. No obligation, no hard sell.
Pathfinder works primarily with municipalities, nonprofits, and grant-funded organizations across North Carolina.