Elijah M. Hughes joined HDR in 2023 to fill a key planning leadership role. He now serves as the firm’s client manager and general planning lead for Pittsburgh Regional Transit (PRT). In that role, he leads a team that includes eight subconsultants to develop station area and transit-oriented development (TOD) plans for the agency, as well as landscape design guidelines and a facilities master plan. 

As an intern with Pittsburgh’s Department of City Planning in 2011, he concentrated on ADA accessibility, helping create and pass two ordinances that made small businesses more accessible. He continues this work today with PRT to improve ADA accessibility at transit stations. Among Hughes’ notable achievements was successfully guiding PRT’s Building on the East Busway study to successful completion. The effort also strengthened collaboration within HDR and positioned the firm for a long-term portfolio of current and future planning projects with PRT. 

Hughes has also authored over $1 million in successful federal planning grant applications by reframing projects in more holistic terms. These funds allowed his client to scale its planning strategies, helping its program grow and advancing its transit-oriented communities goals. When a new water pump station was planned, Hughes connected the water authority and PRT to relocate the planned water pump station to reserve space for future transit vehicle charging infrastructure, decades before it would be needed.  

Similarly, his leadership during the development of the PRT Facilities Master Plan helped the agency rethink infrastructure placement to make space for future TOD while positioning the agency for long-term operational improvements. Internally at HDR, he implemented a visualization tool that maps people, projects and locations, helping teams understand who has worked on what and how efforts relate across the organization. Hughes now shares his experience in bus rapid transit and TOD with colleagues and clients across the country, including with the Southwest Ohio Regional Transit Authority in Cincinnati. 

He invests in his professional development to improve his knowledge and provide better client service. He attends annual Mpact Mobility conferences—where he presented in 2018 and 2024—and subscribes to the mission of approaching transit with a community-first mindset. He is the board chair and a founding board member of Mobilify Southwestern Pennsylvania, advocating for stable and consistent funding for public transportation.  

Hughes also serves on the board of the Allegheny Land Trust to align community development with land conservation. In this role, he secured a $58,000 HDR Foundation grant to create a mobile learning lab that delivers hands-on STEM-based learning to schools, events and libraries.  

He is on the board of Southwestern Pennsylvania Engineering Outreach, where he supports collaboration across large and small disadvantaged business enterprise firms and participates in meetings of ACEC Pennsylvania’s Multimodal and Government Affairs committees. He is a founding core team member of Design for Pittsburgh and currently sits on the Streetscape and Mobility Advisory Committee for the Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership. 

Hughes has supported the next generation of professionals as a former adjunct professor at his alma mater, Carnegie Mellon University. He has also served as a local host committee member for Transportation Camp Pittsburgh. He holds a bachelor’s degree in architecture from Carnegie Mellon University.

Is there a specific experience that led you to where you are today? 

Before we moved into the woods, I was a child in a small town in southern Maine that shaped my understanding of what makes a neighborhood great. I remember walking through Gowen Park on the edge of Number One Pond to get to the grocery store, the family doctor, the dentist, the barber, the YMCA, ice cream, tee ball and all the schools.  Sanford, Maine, is an old mill town, whose physical organizing logic still reflects the electric trolley system, where tracks have long been paved over, but whose legacy is walkability, diversity, access and an intergenerational sense of community. 

What do you enjoy most about your job? 

Every month, every week, every day, every client and every project present novel challenges that require teamwork from people with diverse disciplines and personal backgrounds. I am so grateful for all the people from whom I get to learn and with whom I get to explore. 

What’s the most challenging part of your job? 

The unknown unknowns.  A goal of planning is to create a design brief that concisely narrows the decision-making field within which future designers will need to navigate.  We anticipate and define the known unknowns that will be addressed in future phases of design development. Inferring as many of the unknown unknowns as we can requires a thoughtful, thorough planning approach that invites a broad range of stakeholders to contribute to a shared sense of direction and understanding. 

What is the accomplishment you’re most proud of and why? 

I simultaneously serve on the boards of the Allegheny Land Trust and Mobilify SWPA: yin and yang of land use thought leadership in the Pittsburgh region. One entity takes a stand and says, "This piece of land plays an important ecological role for the region and should never be developed," and the other entity says, "Here, in this area with excellent connectivity and civic infrastructure, here is where we should focus on development." Together, the two organizations incrementally shift the region toward transit-oriented, well-connected communities interwoven with a network of ecologically rich conserved greenspace. 

What is an accomplishment you would like to work towards in your career? 

A world in which everyone loves the communities they live in and feels loved by them. 

What is your best advice you can share from your area of expertise? 

Color outside of the lines.  When we try something new, show up in a different setting and meet new people, we change the topology of how our brains sense the world we inhabit. For four years, I researched the evolution of the brain and inner ear in ancient mammals and published peer-reviewed scientific research in the field. That experience shapes how I approach planning assignments to this day. Skill sets are transferable between fields, and when those moments arise, we introduce new ways of solving problems and how to communicate with the teams we work with.