12 - Biking Report Cards (with making airports bike accessible)
In order to help our NBG Anchor Cities merchandise themselves, to help them give cyclists an idea of what their city looks like before they get there so they can plan accordingly, we will resume production of our yearly scorecard. Called the NBG Biking Report Card, this will also help these population centers show off the enhancements they will have made on an annual basis (we suspended these reports in 2017 when we transitioned our home office to Indianapolis). In order to paint a picture with this analysis, we have broken it down to the questions we introduce this chapter with.
Here for example is how the bike pro-active city of Reno answered the above questions in 2016 - Reno Biking Report Card. Here is 2016 Davis, CA.
Answers to the questions above, will help to describe our Anchor Cities from a bicyclist’s perspective. This is information cyclists, no matter how long they plan to travel, will use to determine what they can expect once they get to these population centers. A much anticipated document, every year, they will give Public Works departments a score card they can use to show off their work. Once they are in place at all of our Anchor Cities, they will have the effect of placing them in friendly competition with one another.
A public document, it will also give Anchor Cities a way to sell themselves to prospective employers interested in locating there. In addition, since they will be much cited and referenced by the media, these documents will become widely known and serve as a Wikipedia type resource for all tourists considering a visit. And finally, since cyclists of any stripe will use them to determine whether they want to visit on a bike, it will not be long before they are known about to the public in general in travel guides such as “Fodors” and the “Let’s Go” series.
Within the city itself, these reports will also give city leaders a way to showcase the quality of life work, work that often goes unnoticed, that they have done for their constituents. This is so because work done for their cyclists brings clean transportation as well as the benefit of exercise. And this register of achievements will give city managers and/or city leaders an analytic they can share with Public Works to see where they stand with their bike riders and where attention is needed.
In time, our Biking Report Cards will become the gold standard cities all over America (we will charge non NBG Anchor cities to develop their own Biking Reports cards according to our spec) will come to rely on to judge the health of their city and its residents. Well beyond our 20 NBG Anchor cities, they will become a tool other cities can put in place. Other population centers will implement them as a way to get their own infrastructure known about. It will be this that will attract out of the area bike visitors as well as encourage more of their own residents to travel by bike.
All this as long haul cyclists from out of the area bike to our Anchor Cities, they will also be regularly enjoying the roads and paths that connect them to one another. And as they do, businesses in the smaller population centers along the way will benefit from all the activity that results. When the businesses in these areas then see the increased dollars that result from hotel stays, restaurant meals and visits to their own attractions, etc., they will also advertise in our Report Cards.
This will also give them an interest in asking their leaders to improve the bike roads that get to them. They will become a voice to also lobby their regional legislators to make it safer and more enjoyable for out of the area pedal visitors to reach them.
Business travelers will also use the scorecards as a way to figure out ahead of time how they can move about on two wheels once they reach these cities. They will use them to see if they can get the exercise they need by being able to bike in them. Our Report Cards will also show them if they can use the bicycle infrastructure in question as a way to decompress from their meetings and the other work they are there to do. Besides recreational, errand and/or training rides when the workday is done, they will also want to know if they can enjoy conference rides with their business associates during the workday itself
Making airports Bike accessible
Scorecard readers will often want to know how bike accessible the airports are. This is so because the more bike friendly they are to air travel, the less expense and wasted time is involved in visiting them. Queuing up to rent a car, their expense and parking considerations are all removed from the equation for those who want to see and experience the city by bike.
Once the baggage carousel delivers them their luggage and their pedal machines, in the future, the best airports will have a small bike shop in luggage claim. A concession licensed from the airport for the purpose of getting arriving bikes ready for the road, as well as back on the plane, its workers will help new travelers centralize and collect all of their baggage once they get there.
Then they will help them reassemble their bikes. Tires can be aired. Bike maps will be available. And any of the accessory items that could be needed such as tubes, cables and some tires, etc., will all be available for sale.
Since a service will also make it possible for them to rent a trailer that they can hook up to their bike, the airport bike mechanics can also help them connect their bikes to these trailers. As for the bike carts, these will be big enough to carry three suitcases.
For those cyclists who want to shake off the travel cobwebs by riding to their hotel unencumbered by a trailer, a service will be available that will make that possible. It will move their luggage for them as they bike to their night’s lodging.
Here, a cottage industry that creates employment for youth can spring up. During the biking season, what can be called Bike Sherpas will move suitcases to and from the hotels. When the trailers are not carrying suitcases, they can transport empty trailers which will have been designed to fold to fit inside of them. By extricating vans or trucks from the shuttle equation in this way, a bike ride from the airport to the hotel will become an earth friendly option. This as young people enjoy the fresh air and exercise of this form of employment, a great entry level job in the workforce.
Toward the end of getting airports connected to downtowns, besides delineating the public transit options, our scorecards will also provide web links that show the roads and paths needed to make these connections. Airport planners can make use of this information to see where they need help improving the paths and roads cyclists need to get to the downtowns. Unlike motorists, since cyclists need services every 5 to 10 miles, our scorecards will help these planners identify where services are needed as a way to help de-isolate airports from the centers of our Anchor Cities.
If airports can make air travel less car dependent, and more bike friendly, it will make travel less complicated and far more affordable. And when this happens, far more people will come with their bikes to our Anchor Cities.
We hope that you've been able to see how the NBG Biking Report Cards we will use to describe our Anchor Cities, can be a crucially important service for our cyclists and for businesses alike. This, as they cause cash registers to ring, greatly empower the visiting cyclist and generate a substantial measure of revenue for our nonprofit NBG. Monies we can run back in to the business of increasing the numbers of people who ride a bike.
As a publication, merchants, dining establishments and lodging purveyors in each city will all have a very big interest in being seen in our NBG Biking Report Cards. Notable proceeds will be generated from the display ads and listings we will sell in them. Nor do those who purchase space have to be in any of these locales. Here, those buyers of advertising interested in being seen as quality of life business concerns will want to participate just so they can have a presence.
Produced on a yearly basis, our NBG Biking Report Cards will provide employment for a staff of people that can grow and grow.