How we can Start Building the National Bicycle Greenway Soon!
Even before we get fully funded, we can get our Virtual Tours across our 20 NBG Anchor Cities loaded to our online maps as early as the summer after next!
While according to our timeline, it will take a decade before all of our Anchor Cities get Downtown Greenways of their own, our effort will have a dramatic impact after our first Summer is complete. It will be then that we will have our Virtual Tour routes through each of these cities loaded to our online maps. In showing long distance cyclists how to get their needs met as they safely and enjoyably move across our Anchor Cities, this will establish THE bike route across America.
As it does, it will regularly remind our Anchor Cities they are a part of our coast-to-coast route. On a day in day out basis, it will make them aware of the fact that what they make of the route we have configured, is how their city will be seen by cyclists from all over the Nation and the world.
This will cause them to make us a priority. In their General Plan, which all of our Anchor Cities have in place (Cincinnati was the first in the USA, 1922), they will build us into it. Since such cities take their lead from this long-term vision for the future, our travel way will require city leaders to keep us considered in any of their future developments.
Any of the ways they want to build their city will track back to our route and any of the planning they do will consider the impact it will have on our right of way. Any of their future pools, parks, attractions, sporting venues, housing tracts and roads, etc. will all take our route into consideration.
All of this is made even more consequential because they will understand that our bicycle highway will be used by people who's opinion is valued far and wide. Because our travelers will actually be in the cities and not scraping the edges of them at great speed, how they see these population centers will carry a lot of weight. In addition, because they see, hear, breathe and feel their immediate surroundings at 10 miles an hour, unlike motorists, their view of their surroundings is widely respected.
A beautiful people powered travel away will be a way for our cities to show themselves off for all the globe to see. This as placing our alignment at the center of their planning efforts, also affects the quality of life for their own constituents.
From the chapter in “NBG Blueprint, How We Will Make the National Bicycle Greenway Real” entitled “From NBG Virtual Tours to Downtown Greenways”.