In+Motion_Summer 2024

6363 N. State HWY 161, Suite 580 | Irving, Texas 75038

Editor:

Crystal Oczkowski Dallas/Fort Worth | 972.890.9800 Steve Perliss San Francisco | 415.908.6450 Daniel McFadden Miami | 305.500.9390 David Little Washington, D.C. | 703.968.7883

Advisors:

About Lea+Elliott Lea+Elliott is a transportation consulting firm offering a broad range of planning, engineering, program management, and construction management services for clients worldwide. These services are provided to public transit authorities, airports and private sector owners for new transit systems and the refurbishment of existing systems. We have expertise in all modes of transit, including high-speed and intercity rail, rapid transit, commuter rail, light rail, automated guideway transit, personal rapid transit, autonomous vehicles, and conventional and advanced technology buses. The firm is especially well known for its creative structuring of procurements for a wide range of delivery options that include DBOM and P3.

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Meet Aaron Hester, P.E.

DALLAS/FORT WORTH – When he’s not designing haunted houses or scripting complicated airport simulation computer code (“just for fun”), you’ll find Aaron Hester hard at work on some of the most challenging people mover, and rail and transit systems in America – such as designing and modeling the power distribution systems for extensions of the Washington Metro to Dulles Airport, or the extension of Miami Dade Transit’s rail system to Miami’s airport, or acting as the lead traction power engineer for the Honolulu Rail Transit Project. Today, he serves as a subject matter expert for the renewal of the DFW Airport Skylink system and its connection to the upcoming new Terminal F. “I like solving new problems,” he says. “There are a lot of similarities between projects, but every project is different. These differences are like puzzles. Finding solutions is very satisfying.”

Aaron sees Lea+Elliott as a very supportive company. He was hired 26 years ago as a CAD draftsman. “Lea+Elliott paid for and encouraged my education at the University of Texas at Arlington,” he says. “ Everyone at the company, especially principals and other engineers, were exceptionally supportive as I pursued my degree in electrical engineering.” Today, this seasoned engineer is fascinated by the challenges he is privileged to explore. “ The most interesting projects are those I am not allowed to discuss,” he says. “Those are typically pushing the edge of technology or represent the future of very public places. It is like seeing the future become reality.” Aaron is especially proud that Lea+Elliott won’t work for system suppliers. “When we are hired by our clients, we are part of their team and are not partial to a specific system supplier. I want to provide my clients with excellent service because that is what I, and Lea+Elliott, will be judged on once a project is complete. I take repeat business as an endorsement of the quality of my work.” But what about those haunted houses that were mentioned at the beginning of this article? Well, it’s safe to say that Aaron’s outside interests are sometimes as challenging as his work. For example, he and his wife and three sons envisioned a haunted house that ran up their driveway and down the whole side of their home. “We’d have consistent lines of visitors that were 20 to 30 deep for hours at a time,” says Aaron. “We were a neighborhood hit.”

In Motion

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Vol. 31 No 1