Introduction - 20 Interconnected Downtown Greenways - the National Bicycle Greenway!
By combining the work our NBG Scouts did from 1998 to 2010, with the GPS input that came our way when we had interactive maps at our site (2007-2009) and then the crowd sourced bike route data that Google now has on line, in 2014, we put the San Francisco to Washington, DC connection we developed on the landing page of BikeRoute.com. The beginning of this book will explain why in making use of certain lightly trafficked US Highways that cross America, we have chosen this direction of travel.
In doing so, we also established the major cities that hold our route together. Called NBG Anchor Cities, they are a crucially important part of our plan to connect the coasts with a bicycle highway. With the help of our downtown lodging and merchant discount programs, we have a plan that will turn these population centers into bicycle villages, where the cyclist is not only welcome, but the preferred user of the roads and paths.
As you will see in the merchant discount program chapter, it will be in the best interest of the purveyors of goods and services, as well as all those in their orbit, to not only be on the lookout for cyclists but to push their city leaders to make conditions safe for them to move about.
So that you can see more of why our Anchor Cities are so important, our discussion will then deliberate upon them. Twenty cities in all, with seven of them in California alone, there is one city that stands tall above all of them, Indianapolis. To strengthen our push to get our SF to DC route to run safely through our population centers, in 2018 we moved our operation to Indy which, as the most centrally located city in the USA, is also known as the Crossroads of America. The real Gateway to the West, as we explain HERE, and Birthplace of the Automobile Industry <link>, Indy has come full circle to it now being recognized as the Greenway Capitol of the World with also the only Downtown Greenway on Planet Earth.
Called the Indianapolis Cultural Trail (ICT), <link> I get to experience the ICT every day! I have been able to see firsthand, how the ICT has raised the profile of the cyclist and dramatically uplifted the economies of the city, the region and the state. In the words ahead, I will use a whole chapter to explain the Indianapolis Cultural Trail. By showing the colossal impact the ICT has had on what was once a dying Rust Belt city, massive in size, you will understand why building Downtown Greenways has become the mission of the NBG. It is here that we look forward to establishing ICT-like Downtown Greenways in all 19 our other NBG Anchor Cities.
By building 19 other Downtown Greenways into our Anchor Cities, this will have the effect of turning them into bicycle playgrounds. And when this becomes the case, they will begin to feel like small villages happily manageable by human powered propulsion. When people can reclaim their cities for themselves, and not their motor vehicles, the element of danger will be removed from moving about in them. Our cities will feel safe. They will feel like fun places to be, to explore, and just to be a part of.
When humans and not the machines that move them about rule the downtown streets of our Anchor Cities, the sanctuary like peace that results will make them magnetic to all of the other cities, towns, and municipalities that lie at their edges. In the same way the cities in our agrarian past were defined by roads that fed the markets at their center, trails and roads made safe for bikes, will all radiate out from our Anchor City downtowns so people of the region can easily access them. At present, the ICT is fed by three different trails. This, as there are trails that feed those trails while others are planned to do so.
When our Anchor Cities are structured with bicycle play at their core, their centers of commerce will come alive as people take part in the new way of doing business our National Bicycle Greenway will have made possible.
Under our plan, people, and not the space grabbing, noise perpetrating machines they travel in will, as can't be said enough, rule the downtown streets. The focus will change from moving as many motor vehicles through the downtown streets as possible, to slowing them down as traffic engineers work to make them safe for human beings. It is this that will benefit the merchants as they find more and more of these self-propelled travelers entering their front doors. To help them even more, in the chapters ahead, we show you how we will make this possible with our NBG merchant and lodging discount programs.
Next, I will explain the Virtual Tour program that will make these NBG Merchant and Lodging programs possible and our Downtown Greenways a reality. Set to run from east to west across our cities, these tours will stop at all the places cyclists go to eat, sleep, shop, play and sightsee. On the ground for two to three years as we work out all of the kinks, as I will be showing you, we will then look forward to teams of landscape developers turning these Virtual Tours into Downtown Greenways, similar to the ICT.
With access points at either end to our Coast to Coast route, this will enable the cross country cyclist to get across our Anchor Cities easily and enjoyably. As they show off the unique character of each of them, Downtown Greenways, as we said above, will also increase bicycle day trips from regional cyclists as well as from those outside the city core.
While all of this is taking place, to underwrite it, there are several ways that we will generate revenue. First I will explain the web monetization that I will be looking for help with once this book is complete. Also, we will use this book to stimulate our Membership Campaign - it will be a benefit all new members receive. Then there are the NBG Anchor City Biking Report Cards where there is huge advertising revenue potential. Our Point of Interest Maps will show where our merchants are as they also give them a great place to communicate their message as this also enriches our coffers. Each Anchor City will get one, HERE is Indianapolis. It will be greatly embellished once we can fund the cartography for Indy and the rest of our cities.
To make sure the reader understands how Indianapolis has always been a transportation leader, Indy is a very important chapter in this book. If you've already read, "How Indianapolis Built America and How it will Rebuild it with the National Bicycle Greenway” <link> the Indy chapter is a synopsized version of it. It is important because, in showing the huge impact Indianapolis, once the wealthiest city in the USA, has had on the rest of this Nation, you will see that this city long has led the way
Beginning with the first road into the frontier that nearly half a million people used (once the National Road bridge over the White River was completed in 1834), with its first in the world Union Train Station of 1852 that relocated many hundreds of thousands of people of the East to San Francisco with as many as 200 trains a day once transcontinental railroad was completed in 1869, with the first Coast to Coast Road, the Lincoln Hwy of 1914, with its being the Birthplace of the Automobile Industry and home to the most carmakers of any American city, 97, with the Indy 500 (the world’s first test track and still the largest spectator event in the world), with the now deceased largest inter-urban train system in the country, with the first car headlight and all of its other breakthrough industries, etc, setting the trends is familiar turf for Indianapolis.
In the same way Indianapolis reinvented itself, we can reinvent the rest of America with a Network of Downtown Greenways!
In this first phase, as we impregnate our coast to coast travel way with a network of bicycle villages, we will also be building a strong presence for the entirety of our route on line. As we do, we will be establishing it as the way for an individual to ride a bicycle across America. Whether they do so in one trek, or in sections, we will have a route in place that gets them the unspoken right of passage of having earned their wings as a cyclist
Because few resources and even fewer people will feel called to our vision, unless it can generate notable revenue, once our Downtown Greenways start bringing our downtown centers of commerce back to life with our Merchant & Downtown Lodging discounts and Points of Interest Maps (POI), the revitalized downtown Americas that will result will show the power of the bicyclist’s pocketbook. And when this happens, all of the other programs we talk about in the words ahead, will gain strength.
Biking Report Cards | Fundraising Programs with Point of Sale Campaigns to include Check Out Charity | NBG Day at various merchants who give us a small percentage of that day’s sales | National Mayors' Ride Festival/Gateway Fest at the National Bike Capital, etc.
Here are other Revenue Streams this book discusses that will result in Phase One - Display Ads on our Maps and the pages for our:
Biking Report Cards | Mountain Mover Podcasts | NBG Anchor Cities
As well as Google Ads on all NBG pages including Display Ad pages
In having built a podium upon which the everyday cyclist can aspire to, we will be building will for then getting markers on the ground from one coast to the other in our next phase - the subject of Book Two!
With a marked route, all the other programs Book 2 explains will be become possible. These are:
Greenway route signage | NBG Passport License sales | Corporate sections | NBG mile marker logos & renewals | Sleeping Centers | Rider Blogs | History Placard Sponsorships | NBG Hub(s) | Marking our Route (adoption of sections, benches, mile markers, etc.) | Route Signage Sales, e.g., history placard sponsorships, location of services, distances, etc. | Map Display Ad Sales for system-wide national ads | Ride/event licensure of our route | BikeRoute.com certificates like Camino de Santiago compostelas riders can use to TransAm spaced over several years
Once we are armed with the authority of a strong online presence as well as mileposts on the road after phase 2 is complete, our work will turn our route into a national asset that will one day become Car Free.
We foresee the use of our route by other nonprofits for fundraising efforts of their own. An on the ground National Bicycle Greenway will also greatly stimulate tourism from abroad as well as from all 50 States in the Union.