Melinda Vonstein - Greenways, Blueways, and a 1,000-Mile Vision

[00:00:05] Christy: Welcome to Green Champions.

[00:00:06] Dominique: Thanks for joining us in a conversation with real people sharing sustainability success stories.

[00:00:10] Christy: This podcast is a platform for green champions to share their stories and plant new ideas. I'm Christy. 

[00:00:16] Dominique: And I'm Dominique. 

[00:00:17] Christy: Today we're continuing our miniseries with the Mid-Ohio Regional Planning Commission, or MORPC, highlighting the innovators and initiatives driving sustainability across Central Ohio ahead of MORPC's annual Sustainability Summit.

[00:00:30] Dominique: And we are back with Melinda Vonstein. She is the Greenways Planning Studio lead at MORPC, where she works to plan and expand Central Ohio greenways and strengthen connections between communities across the region. In this episode in particular, I'm so, so excited, we are exploring Melinda's work and how greenways, blueways, active transportation, and everything in between can connect communities and support local economies and create more accessible outdoor spaces.

So thanks, Melinda, for coming back, and I'm excited to get into it.

[00:00:59] Melinda: Thanks for having me. 

[00:01:00] Christy: Amazing. In our last conversation, you shared a little bit about how you grew up and exploring trails and taking public transportation and how that has influenced your future here 'cause you're very connected to systems and planning. 

But I really love the human-centered design approach for transportation and the experience of that. So we get to dive deeper into that this time. And so I'm excited about that. 

[00:01:27] Melinda: Okay, Melinda, let's start with talking about greenways. I think this is the core of some of the work that you're doing and will help us understand how some of this stuff comes to life. Can you walk us through what a greenway is one more time? Yeah, sure. I can talk about what a greenway is. I think first and most simply, our greenways are the most beautiful way that you can get around the city. But more broadly, our Central Ohio Greenways network is a network of almost 400 miles of paved multi-use trails. Many of them are along river corridors, so the Olentangy and the Alum Creek are our most popular river trails.

But we also have some urban greenways that go along major east-west corridors like Hudson, and other more urban corridors. 

Yeah, and I wanna note for anybody who's not been on the greenways that sometimes when you go on trail networks like this in other places, it might say greenway or trail or insert the right word there. But you end up being partially on a road and being in like a dedicated bike lane, which is still important and we need to have those.

But I wanna call out that like the greenways we're talking about are really safe, and they're dedicated pathways for folks that are navigating the greenways separate from the road. Yeah, exactly. I remember a couple of years ago, my brother, when he turned 18, came to visit. And I don't remember why, but I had to go pick something back up at the MORPC office, and I was like, "Peter, just come with me. We will ride bikes downtown. It'll be great." And we rode from around the North Broadway area on the Olentangy Trail all the way downtown, and we were almost downtown, and my brother was like, "We've been riding forever, and we haven't seen a single car. This is incredible." And, that's what our trail network is. It's about a space that is for people to exist, not a space for people to avoid a car.

[00:03:19] Christy: Yeah. it's amazing. It truly is. Melinda, your title is Greenways Planning Studio Lead. Describe that. What does your day-to-day look like?

[00:03:27] Melinda: My role as the Greenways Planning Studio lead is to really encourage communities to think boldly and collaboratively and envision a future of walking and biking and connecting with nature that is what all of us crave and all of us imagine for ourselves and for our children and for our future generations.

So I get to work with local governments all the time about how to think even more boldly than they're thinking, about how to access more funds, how to develop better trail networks and connect across jurisdictional boundaries. I'll share a little bit of an antidote about when I first started at MORPC nearly nine years ago.

Part of my role was to go around and talk to local governments about this collaborative vision for, at the time it was 500 miles of trails. And I just remember so many people scoffing at that vision. They were like, "Oh my god," "That is so not realistic. We will never do that. We don't have enough money for that.

We will be long gone before that ever happens." But I'm just so proud of all of the people that have supported this vision and who have given their passion and continued to drive the region towards thinking about how we can actually make this a reality. Today, I get to stand up and tell people that this vision that was once too bold is not bold enough.

I don't know if you guys remember, but last year there was a ballot initiative called Issue 47 that COTA brought to voters in Franklin County, asking for a little bit of additional sales tax to support not only increased public transit, but to also support the development of more sidewalks, bikeways, and trails.

And we all said, "Yes, we would love more sidewalks, bikeways, and trails." And starting this year, we now have $60 million annually for sidewalks, bikeways, and trails in the region, from now until forever. And if $60 million sounds like a lot, I'm telling you it is a lot, even in terms of transportation dollars.

So prior to 2022, we were allocating approximately two to four million dollars of our state and federal transportation funds to these sorts of transportation infrastructure. So to go from 2 million annually to 60 million annually is transformative. I'm not exaggerating when I say that. And we will be building a quarter of that once too bold vision in Franklin County in the next five years.

I just wanna give kudos to all the people in the region that throughout the last decade plus have been talking about more trails and demanding that our region think about how we're gonna build them, 'cause now we get to.

[00:06:01] Dominique: No, that is so, so exciting. I got goosebumps hearing you talk about that. And we're about toget into the weeds on the different initiatives you're working on. Is it a good way to think about this that the funding like that has opened the doors to the expansion plans we're about to hear?

[00:06:16] Melinda: Yes. I mean, without that sort of funding, we would still be talking about, "Oh, what is the biggest priority trail?what half mile of trail should we be building this year?" And instead, we get to talk about how we're gonna be build 50 miles of trails in five years. One of the trail projects that is being funded in a really cool collaborative way is the Big Walnut Trail.

The Big Walnut is on the east side of the Columbus region, and that trail is the most rapidly developing trail that we've ever had in our region. So it'll be similar to the Olentangy and Alum Creek in terms of connectivity and vibe, that very park-like, wooded trail vibe. So because of that, sales tax funding, we get to build something like that.

Sales tax money is money that we control here locally. So regardless of what happens at the state or federal level, we still have this funding source.

[00:07:10] Dominique: That is incredible. And we're talking about resilience, in this day and age, I am so grateful to hear that. 

Yeah, for sure. 

[00:07:16] Christy: I'm curious about the terminology about active transportation. It's something that you've used before. What is active transportation in your work? What does that mean, and what does it mean for the communities?

Yeah. So active transportation is a phrase that planners and engineers who like to come up with jargon use to describe walking or biking. I love it. That was a great definition. I didn't even know what it was, but yes.

[00:07:40] Melinda: We, like to say active transportation infrastructure when we mean sidewalk. So, yeah, that's what it is. It is supporting people who are walking, biking, and just navigating 

around the city.

[00:07:53] Dominique: And MORPC has a formal active transportation plan, correct?

[00:07:57] Melinda: Yes, we do. We're actually updating that plan right now. Colleagues that focus on active transportation and I are updating that, and what's unique about it this time is that we are really focusing on our trail network as a core component of that plan. We're really leaning into the fact that our trail network is the backbone of active transportation.

So with this plan, we're really integrating our work in one place and seeing our work as complements and as one system.

[00:08:26] Christy: When I think about your budget dollars and you share that with me, I think about infrastructure from a standpoint of the physical sidewalk, the asphalt of the paved bikeway and such.

You mentioned parks and rec and it made me think about does it also include if there need to be trees built or garbage cans, recycling cans along the way and the infrastructure for that? Is that also included in that or is that a different budget department? 

[00:08:50] Melinda: I think it depends on the project and the scale. MORPC does not build any trails.I ama few steps back, long-range planning, helping communities think about where they could put them and where they could find the funding for trails.

But one of the things that we are starting to explore with our greenways stakeholders and our working groups that we have is really broadening the definition of what a greenway is. I think no longer do we have to think of a greenway as just10-feet wide stretch of pavement.

We can think about it as a broader ecosystem that is not only supporting people who need to get places or want to engage with nature, but also as an ecosystem that is supporting the natural space around it. So what I think that we're hoping to do as a region is to encourage more tree plantings to be part of the upfront cost of construction, and to also include things like invasive removal, so honeysuckle removal, tree canopy restoration, and kinda just really restoring the natural habitat of these places that we love so much and want to experience as part of the upfront cost of a trail project and as a core component of a trail project.

I think that's really important because it is part of the trail. It's part of why we love trails is because of the ecosystem around it. But also from a funding perspective, we have more funding for upfront construction and less for maintenance. And right now what we do generally is we'll build a trail along a wooded beautiful place that we all wanna spend time in, and then we will rely on the super passionate volunteer labor of our watershed partners like FLOW and FACT to come in after the fact and clear out invasives and restore tree canopy.

And how amazing would it be if we were funding that sort of work at the upfront and thinking about that as part of a trail project?

[00:10:42] Dominique: And it's extra, topical because we're recording this in the same summer that we've had so many rains. And I have personally experienced how much flooding has come on the trailways, which is really uncommon. We've had justenormous amounts of water. But when thinking about the areas of the trail that I found personally were more resilient on my navigation were when they had more vegetation around them.

And there's just so many benefits to protecting those spaces long term by having those well-rounded points of view. 

I mean, I have seen that sort of flood resilience in my own backyard firsthand. The native plants grow root systems that are two, three, four feet long.

[00:11:22] Melinda: So the ecosystem under the soil is just like a sponge. And since I've started really adding more natives to my yard, it doesn't flood anymore. It used to flood every spring when we would get rains. It would have flooded when we had all of that rain, last week or whenever it was, but it doesn't anymore.

But my neighbors' yards do. And it's just really interesting 'cause they have all grass and it's flooding, and mine is a sponge. And if we can just kind of think about how we can support the ecosystem as part of a trail project, so a trail project is additive, not just in terms of mobility in our region, but additive in terms of supporting resiliency and the environment, I think that would be really incredible.

[00:12:04] Dominique: Absolutely. 

Well, I know we're talking about water, and I wanna also mention that the greenways connects also to the blueways. And can you tell us what we should know about blueways?

[00:12:15] Melinda: Yeah. So one of the programs that we're lumping into our Greenways umbrella of work at MORPC is our Blueways or our water recreation work. And what we're trying to do is really build a stronger culture of connecting with our waterways, a stronger culture of kayaking, fishing, and engaging with our numerous waterways in the region.

 compared to other places across the state and across the country, I think Central Ohio doesn't really have such a deep culture of kayaking or engaging with the water. And I think we can start to think about how to develop that. I think many of us are craving that. 

I'm learning a lot about water recreation, water safety by bringing together many partners who know more than me about water recreation.

And really what we're trying to do is think about where within our region it might make sense to encourage more kayaking, where we might wanna have more staff out there regularly making sure people are safe, and where we might want to lean into protecting the natural ecosystem of a waterway and maybe discourage people from getting in the actual water and really focus on species restoration, habitat restoration, and things like that.

So I think there'll be more to come on all of that. Over the last few years, I've had an amazing opportunity or series of opportunities to kayak various portions of the Big Walnut, and it is just such an incredibly beautiful water corridor. I remember Tim Moloney from Metro Parks took me on the section south of Hoover, and the sycamore trees in that area 

and the tree canopy in that area is just unreal.

It's so beautiful. it doesn't seem like you're in an urban space, and you really are.

[00:13:56] Dominique: That is incredible. We have so many great local organizations too that are along those pathways, which I think also leads into the idea of, economic development. a big part of your strategic planning for the greenways is connecting to communities. And I wanted to mention that we know that your trail towns are part of, back in 2023, your Central Ohio Greenway Strategic Action Plan incorporated trail towns, and I am excited to talk more about that 'cause what you're doing is not only important for those who are enjoying these pathways, but also for the communities they run through. Can you explain first what a trail town is?

Give us maybe a mental picture, and then we can learn more about how they come together.

[00:14:34] Melinda: Yeah. So when we were thinking about developing Trail Towns, it kind of came out of this idea that in order to encourage more people to walk and bike and connect with nature and really build that culture in our region, we needed to do more than just build pavement.

We needed to help people see themselves on the trails, see that they belong on the trails, and really promote it as a fun, inclusive opportunity to just get out there, to socialize, to get to work, to go to a local business, and to engage in our community. So about five years ago, we started developing this whole idea of Trail Towns for Central Ohio, and the way that it developed, I think is unique for our region and for a MORPC program.

We had rural communities coming to us. They said, "Hey, we've heard about this Trail Town program in Pennsylvania, and it's really doing some fantastic things in terms of economic development in small towns. Can you help us think about what that might mean for our region?" And I was like, "Okay. Yeah, sure. I don't know with what money, but sure, let's create a Trail Town program." And I just kept talking to them for five years. We got drops of funding here and there to develop a program and to think through how we could sustainably operate a program with no money. And, excitingly, we were able to figure out a real tangible way to launch Trail Towns of Central Ohio just this year.

We launched the program in partnership with Experience Columbus, who's been our branding and promotional partner. And we welcomed a cohort of five communities that represent rural, suburban, and urban places in Central Ohio to work with us to develop their trail-related identity, to think about what was unique about their trail identity.

We wrote trail lore. We created walking and biking routes. Most communities have a Spotify playlist that they encourage you to use while you're walking through their community. And we've really worked with them over the first half of this year to figure out what their trail identity is and to remind them that they do have one.

And we've created an Esri StoryMap for each community. We have a local artist who's so incredibly talented. She remains anonymous, but she's developed badges for each of the communities that represent just that community's identity. I can't wait for you guys to see them. We're gonna be rolling them out into next year.

[00:17:03] Dominique: Yeah, how can you find all of this stuff? 'Cause I'm like I need to go see this.

[00:17:06] Melinda: Yeah, so we haven't done a hard launch of this program yet. We're thinking about how we really launch this in the springtime of next year. This year, the second half of this year, we are engaging with a consultant to help us develop a trail-friendly business program that's a component of Trail Towns, where we work with small businesses in each of the trail towns.

And I'll tell you what the first cohort of Trail Towns are. It's Mount Vernon, Centerburg, Westerville, Worthington, and London. 

So many of those communities are along the Ohio to Erie Trail, if you're familiar, or the Olentangy. So we're working with local businesses in those communities to designate them as trail-friendly, which just means if you are wearing trail clothes or coming up off the trail, you're welcome in their shop.

They would have water for you. They know where nearby bike parking is. They know a little bit of information about the trail, and a little bit of information about the next town accessible by trail. So it's really collaborative in that way. But one component of what we're developing is a merch line.

So very soon, you will be able to go into a brick-and-mortar in our various Trail Towns and purchase a sticker or a water bottle. 

So we're working on all of that so that we can really promote this culture of trails and walking and biking at a variety of levels, at our local government staff level, at the resident level, and, hopefully encourage even more people to love their communities, love their neighbor's community, and get out there and bike or walk, or rollerblade. 

I can see that on a homage T-shirt too, by the way, of merch. it just feels like it's right,That's what everyone says. So if Homage is listening,what do we gotta 

[00:18:47] Christy: Yeah. I would buy it. I think all of us here would. You've got three commitments right here.

[00:18:53] Dominique: No, that's amazing. I just wanted to comment on, like I love the heart and like the whimsy that you're putting into this program. 

 and I'm so excited to listen to these Spotify playlists and see the badges.

[00:19:03] Christy: Me too. I think the Spotify playlist is interesting 'cause I'm always looking for new music. 

Yeah, less decisions for us to be making. And one question I had from my own personal riding the trails point of view that I wanted to ask you is, an element of when you're on these trails, whether you're going through different towns or just following along a river is, you come upon a bridge.

[00:19:24] Dominique: I think the trail ways are so interesting, and sometimes they're winding and wrapping water, and sometimes they cut through a town. And so I've always just wanted to understand how the map came to be.

[00:19:33] Melinda: We have over 100 local governments that come together every year to share new feasibility understandings, new dreams for their community and how their community might connect to another community. And then we update our vision every year. So if you look at the regional trail vision on the Central Ohio Greenways website today, next year it might look slightly different because a community learned, "Oh wait, the trail won't work on that side of the the river, but it actually would work over here."

So we'll kind of tweak where we are envisioning our planned trails over time.

[00:20:04] Dominique: That makes sense. And when we're in this mode of looking ahead, and hearing just in particular, from your standpoint, what you're most excited about, how do you envision how our greenways are gonna continue to grow and evolve?

[00:20:16] Melinda: Yeah. I mean, I'm just excited about this new era of trail building that we're entering. I'm excited to see what this next decade brings with the new COTA sales tax funding. I think that more neighborhoods are gonna be connected to trails. I think it's gonna become more apparent that it is okay to walk and bike throughout the region and become more safe.

You know, one of the things that is sometimes challenging in my role is I really wanna encourage everyone to walk and bike and take transit and say, "Yes, it's the best choice. It's the most beautiful choice. It's the safest choice." But the reality is that today, that's only true if you live in the exact right place, and that your place of employment is in the exact right place.

But for, I think a majority of people in our region, there are majortransportation safety concerns that are true barriers to walking and biking or using transit. And so for me, sometimes it's challenging to be that person that says, "Yes, obviously you should bike to work," because it's not always the safest choice, and a lot of times it can be quite uncomfortable and risky to ride on certain roads.

So part of my role is to encourage people to walk and bike and connect with nature, but I think more importantly, my role is about encouraging local governments to create communities that allow people to have a dignified, safe, and comfortable experience walking and biking and connecting with nature.

'Cause it's a little bit out of touch for us to all say, "Yeah, get out there. Go ride your bike to work on High Street or Cleveland Avenue."that's not fun and comfortable and wooded and beautiful.

[00:21:54] Christy: Lots of traffic. 

So for folks that live in Central Ohio that have the opportunity to use the greenways or blue ways and just discover this network, how should they go about doing that?

[00:22:07] Melinda: Well, just this year we have released a brand new printed Columbus metro bike map, and it's the sixth edition. So the last time we updated that bike map was 10 years ago in 2016. A lot of new infrastructure has been built since then, so this is a really nice refreshed map. It's available at libraries and community centers.

We have them at MORPC. We want anyone that wants a map to have one for free. It shows how stressful or comfortable it would be to cycle on a roadway. So if it's like a comfortable roadway, like low traffic, low speeds where you would feel just generally comfortable riding along cars, it'll be notated in green or blue.

And then if it's one of those more stressful roadways like Cleveland Avenue or 161, it would be notated in red. So people can maybe plan their trip and know more about what their level of

comfort or their safety might be. 

I'm really excited for that to be released. Hopefully, you guys get your hands on one of those soon. But also what we launched this year is for the very first time, the first edition of our regional trail guide. And so that is a map of all of our paved regional trails in our 15 county area. Of course we've got the Olentangy and Alum Creek if you're local, but we also have the Tall Grass Trail and the Prairie Grass Trail in some of our rural counties.

[00:23:29] Dominique: And the back of that printed map has featured rides which we have curated for you. So, if you are new to biking or you're just wondering if there's a safe, comfortable trip that you can take, yes, there is. We've curated all of those for you. I'm very grateful for the work that you're doing because that was me not too long ago, getting to know how I can bike so much further on such safe roads. I'm on path to do my first 100-mile ride this year. So, 

thanks for your greenways supporting me doing that in a way that feels, very safe and easy to get into.

And thank you for talking about trail towns and the ways that we're gonna see our greenways and blueways changing over time.

And you plugged so many helpful resources, so I'm so excited. I hope this is an episode that gets listened to while somebody is on a run or a bike ride on the trail. And I wanna mention that the Summit of, On Sustainability with MORPC is also coming up. So this episode's gonna release right around the time of the event, which is October 28th.

Is there anything you're really excited about, Melinda, seeing at the summit?

[00:24:30] Melinda: Yeah. I'm excited about seeing you guys and all of the other sustainability experts, people that care about sustainability in our region come together and share their ideas. There'll be lots of breakout learning sessions where people can learn about all sorts of sustainability initiatives, including a few on greenways, where if you haven't heard enough already, we'll do some deep dives on some of our programs.

[00:24:54] Christy: So how can people connect with you or learn more about the summit and all the Greenways, Blueways, all the things?

[00:25:01] Melinda: Yeah. So if you wanna learn more about Greenways, you can follow Central Ohio Greenways on Facebook or Instagram. You can also check out the centralohiogreenways.com website, for more information about Greenways. And if you wanna attend the summit, you can go to morpc.org/summitonsustainability. The event is on October 28th at the Hilton Downtown, and you can register on the website.

[00:25:27] Dominique: Perfect. Thanks, Melinda.

[00:25:28] Melinda: Thank you.

[00:25:29] Dominique: Each guest brings a different approach to sustainability, and we're here to highlight people doing the work that inspires others because climate action takes many forms.

[00:25:36] Christy: As always, you can find all of our episodes and support the show at thegreenchampions.com. If you enjoyed this episode, please follow, subscribe, and leave us a review on your favorite podcast platform. Stay connected with us on LinkedIn and Instagram, @greenchampionspod. Our music is by Zayn Dweik. Thanks for listening to Green Champions. We'll be back next time with another sustainability success story.