Why "How Indy Built America" needed for "NBG Blueprint - Interconnecting America with a Network of Coast to Coast Bicycle Villages"
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In 2019, I also created this 5-minute video Virtual Tour of the Indianapolis Cultural Trail, the only Downtown Greenway in the World!! In the same year, I also published my new book. “How Indianapolis built America” (HIBA) endeavors to change the nation’s perception of Indianapolis as being a place filled with speeding automobiles. You see, in the last twenty years, because of its internationally renowned Greenway system that is fed by its globally celebrated, downtown Cultural Trail, the only one of its kind in the world, Indianapolis is more and more becoming known as the city with the most bike friendly downtown in America!
HIBA shows, how, in coming full circle back to being a top place for cyclists, it was the bicycle, its clubs, racers and industry captains that went on to help make Indianapolis the world’s original leader in the early years of gasoline powered transport. In it, I also show how the dynamic Carl Fisher used his successes in the universe of pedal power to make the car the ruler king it then went on to become.
HIBA also shows you how the transportation innovations Indianapolis brings about continue to affect the face of the Nation. From the the National Road Bridge that opened up the West, to Fisher filling the region with first HiWheel then conventional bicycles, to its revolutionizing train travel with implementing the first union train station hub in the world, to one of its companies making chain affordable enough that bicycles could be sized down to where they could be stood over and motors could then do work, to another one of its businesses (run by Fisher) making it possible to drive a car past sundown, to it bringing about the first car highway to connect the coasts (led by Fisher), Indianapolis has always stood at the forefront of how we as an American people move about.
In laying a foundation for showing you how it was the actions that took place in Indianapolis that brought about the America we now know, I used the beginning of HIBA to take that reader through the timeline of a short history of long distance travel in America. In a later chapter, I talked about how the chain one Indianapolis company produced was needed before cars could even exist to then enjoy the roads that would bring the Western frontier into the 20th century. As the makers of a part that most all machines, whether powered by humans or by motors, need even today, Diamond Chain of 1890 flourished with its mammoth factory in Indianapolis until they moved in 2022. As testimony to the impact this company had on all of the world, Diamond Chain was one of the chief drivers of the Industrial Revolution,
As the Crossroads of America where half of the nation is now within an 8-hour car drive, that book showed how it was Fisher who gave purpose to long distance driving. There you saw how he got Americans everywhere to help him build the first road across an entire continent. The Lincoln Highway, originated in, and developed from Indianapolis, was the first arterial to travel from the Eastern Seaboard to the Pacific Ocean.
In that book, you will also see how Mr. Greenway, Ray Irvin, led the charge that transformed the Rust Belt City Indianapolis had gone on to become to its now being known as the Greenway Capital of America. As an extension of Irvin’s work, the 10-mile Indianapolis Cultural Trail is what we will be keying off of as we endeavor to connect the coasts for cyclists.
By the time you have finished this book, you will understand why I need to be here so I can relaunch the National Bicycle Greenway from where Greenways are a known and valued commodity. In daily using and learning about the Cultural Trail, I have devised a formula that will establish Downtown Greenways in all 19 of our other NBG Anchor cities that connect San Francisco to Washington, DC. With such a template in place, the NBG can help cities show themselves off as they attract bicycle visitors from nearby and from all over the nation and world. It will be this new tourist economy that will inspire bikeways to and from these population centers as they also use them to connect to one another with the result, in time, of what we have long foreseen, the National Bicycle Greenway
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