After my five years in Ireland raising my son Cayo till he was four years old, the National Bicycle Greenway organization that I got nonprofit status for in 1993, was disarrayed and had lost a lot of its luster. Without my wife, or son, I returned to America in 2015 to Davis, CA, thinking I could bring the burn back with an NBG relaunch from what some people refer to as the “Bike Capital of America”. Well, in terms of bicycle facilities, on a per square mile (only 9) or per capita (65K) basis, Davis has no equal (HERE are all the biking amenities).

However, surrounded on all four sides by farmland, as I-80 (what the Lincoln Hwy, America’s first coast-to-coast highway, yielded to) thunders through it, not only is its human power infrastructure built out, but almost like an island, even tiny bits of its example are extremely hard to replicate, even in the three tiny farm towns ten miles away. This, while it’s connection to Sacramento, the State Capitol, at only 12 miles away, is directly adjacent to busy Interstate 80 (separated by a concrete, jersey wall and cyclone fencing) and is only navigable by the most hardy of cyclists.

Nor was Davis an attractive destination for those who may have come from out of town to the national events I tried to stage there (while Indianapolis has the top rated airport in North America, Davis does not even have a commercial airport). In the summer, when most people do their bike rides, Davis, a college town/bedroom community, rolls up the sidewalks of its small downtown well before noon. It just gets so hot there that locals defer to their air conditioned homes, cars, offices or classrooms. Unlike Indianapolis, the Greenway Capital of America (and a city with the most bike friendly downtown in the world), where in the summer, people outside are everywhere, Davis is like a ghost town quietly filled with the well manicured yards of an outsized preponderance of large-sized homes.

Well before I ended up in what I thought was America’s top bicycle heaven, in the 1990’s, while I was in the far more temperate San Francisco Bay Area, as I watched Ray Irvin, globally known as Mr Greenway, transform a dying city with Greenways, I also listened to him gush about the all new Indianapolis Greenway scene that was beginning to emerge. And when I saw it for myself in August 2017, I knew this was where the NBG and I needed to be.

When I was in Ireland (2010-2015) writing my book, “How America Can Bike and Grow Rich, the National Bicycle Greenway in Action” (HBGR), I acquired an in depth understanding of the road that built America, the Lincoln Highway of 1914. Toward that end, I used the Castlebar, Ireland (pop 12,068) library to bring in reading material about the Lincoln from all over America. It was then that I became aware that not only did it pass through Davis, CA, but that Indianapolis is where the movement for it began. And the force who led the charge for it was a former HiWheel racer and bike shop owner named Carl Fisher, who had become one of the. wealthiest people in the world. Fisher was one of the wealthiest people in the world. (HERE is the chapter I wrote about him in “How Indianapolis Built America and How it will Rebuild It with the National Bicycle Greenway”).

In 1909 Fisher led the charge with three others to honor Mayor Bookwalter’s request for a speedway when they built the world famous Indy 500 car racing track. Also in 1909, his 5-story Fisher Automobile Company was completed to become the first automobile show room in the world. Soon, the world’s first Auto Row led from it. For half a mile, on Capitol Ave, the street was lined with car related sales and services (tires, brakes, upholstery, bodywork, etc.).

Besides selling cars, Fishers turn-of-the-century skyscraper also served as the home office for the first car headlight business, Presto-Lite. From his Michigan and Capital location (now a massive condominium/apartment complex anchored by Kroger’s), he managed factories all over America that made it possible to drive a car at night.

Through Presto-O-Lite, Fisher made car headlights affordable and widely available. This allowed the public to drive to recreation and errands when the sun went down. It also meant they could work longer hours. As a result, the productivity of factories all over America increased dramatically.

Here at his new building, was also the braintrust for the national highway he foresaw. In HBGR, in the chapter, “Lessons Learned from America’s First Coast-to-coast Highway in Building the NBG”, I talk about how Fisher established the Lincoln Highway Administration (LHA) to build will for his vision of a coast-to-coast car road with Indianapolis at its center. From Indianapolis, once the home of 97 different car manufacturers, he promoted tirelessly and the red line he drew on a map connecting Indy with San Francisco became a reality in July of 1913 when his Indianapolis based organization used 17 cars and two trucks as a part of the 1,700 mile Hoosier Tour (also called the Indiana–Pacific Indiana Automobile Manufacturers Association Tour) to blaze the exact route they would work to flesh out.

In the end, in deference to one of his sponsors, William Packard of Detroit based Packard Motor Car Company, the LHA route across America would use existing roads just north of Indianapolis to get to Chicago from New York. From there, they would rely on old stagecoach, lines, and old Indian and wildlife trails, all lightly etched out in the dirt, to follow the transcontinental railroad alignment. The LHA then went on to rally America around the Lincoln with everything from encouraging church sermons and poetry about it to noteworthy national Boy Scout participation, a weekly radio show, even a World War I victory celebration on it that included a young Gen. Eisenhower, the former president and father of the interstate, nearly half a century later, etc, etc,.

The Lincoln reached from Times Square in New York City to the World’s Fair in San Francisco in 1915 as a smorgasbord of different roads, most all of them, as we just saw, dirt west of Chicago. As they continued to work to make their coast-to-coast highway real, Fisher and his group, also had the added financial support from his wealthy friends including, Thomas Edison, former U.S. Presidents Theodore Roosevelt as well as Woodrow Wilson, the first U.S. President to make frequent use of an automobile for relaxation.

By invoking the image of Abraham Lincoln, the LHA had succeeded at making it seem patriotic for people from all walks of life to drive, and as more and more motorists, in their newly minted automobiles, flocked to it every year, the Lincoln Hwy sparked a road building frenzy that continued unchecked all over the USA well into the 1970’s. Ultimately, as America’s love affair with the car and the highways built to accommodate it continued to explode, the Lincoln got swallowed up by the numbered highways of the Federal Highway Administration.

Like many big cities in the USA, Indianapolis got run over by all the cars its Lincoln success had engendered. It then started to die when most of its manufacturing began to leave the country in the 70’s and 80’s.This is where Ray Irvin began to make a difference. In the early 90’s he started building the internationally recognized Indy Greenways network. And by the end of the millennium, as more and more Greenways got added, more and more jobs and young people began to flock to Indianapolis.

How could they not?

In addition to the 18-mile long Monon Trail, the downtown canal towpath Ray helped turn into a place of magic and the world renowned, 11-mile Indianapolis Cultural Trail that reenergized many of the sidewalks Indy merchants do their business from, these and other greenway trophies continue to make Indianapolis central look like one giant college campus. In this podcast – (transcription), Ray Irvin prophecized this in 2006 when I did an interview with him. To the green and the play that is everywhere, add the fact that as the Crossroads of America, that 50% of the USA is all within an 8-hour car drive, and you will see why Indianapolis has become such a powerful magnet to workers who bring innovation and exciting youthful energy to this city.

As for myself, when I first moved here, in keeping faith with aligning our National Bicycle Greenway effort with the power of the Lincoln Highway that built the America we know today, because homes are still so surprisingly affordable here, I was able to buy a 19th Century Victorian farmhouse just a few blocks from Washington Street, aka, US 40, the original National Road! Surrounded by history, I was, five or so blocks from the old Duesenberg Motorworks factory.

Legendary as a regular winner in the early days of the Indy 500 speedway, their luxury automobiles selling for as much as a quarter million dollars in 2018 value, were the finest money could buy. In fact, from 1919 to 1937 the Duesenberg was the Rolls Royce of its day and was the source of the saying, “it’s a Duesy!” used to describe the best of the best.

Headed towards downtown less than a mile away, is the bridge that has now become a center of play for Indianapolis locals. In crossing the lazy White River, the old Washington St Bridge of 1870 (it replaced the pioneering wood covered National Road bridge of 1834, one hundred feet away), it once stood out as the gateway to the downtown Indianapolis Auto Row we talked about earlier. Now, however, under Ray Irvin’s direction, the bridge, closed to cars, has become a tastefully designed promenade that is always filled with people and activity as it connects the Indianapolis Zoo to White River State Park (WRSP) that Ray also helped to bring about.

Coming back to the National Road Wood covered bridge, before the Lincoln. Highway built America as we said, it was, as I, and several respected historians, feel, the true gateway to the west <why this is so>. Sadly, dismantled in 1902, nearly half a million people used the National Road wood covered bridge to get to the gold of California, the homestead land of Oregon, the religion of Salt Lake City and the settlement of Kansas as a slave free state, as it sent an incalculable tonnage of goods west from the factories that sprang up all along the nearby riverfront

On the downtown side of the river is where John McCormick built the first cabin in Indianapolis in 1820. It was originally situated on the other side of Fall Creek from the bridge before that waterway got rerouted in 1875 per this link.

Now all of this sits at the foot of downtown and the wildly popular. Indianapolis Cultural Trail, where it passes through White River State Park (WRSP). At WRSP, besides a world class, outdoor concert stage, it also features 3 and 4-wheel bike rentals, a community garden, sprawling lawns and direct access to the beginning of the world class Indy Canal that we’ll talk about below.

As for the Indianapolis Cultural Trail (ICT), as a piece of bicycle infrastructure unlike any, anywhere else in the world, I could not keep the National Bicycle Greenway in California after I rode it. As the template for what we want to replicate in all 19 of our other Anchor Cities, we have given it its own chapter in the words ahead here.

With such a way of moving people about, not only will tourism explode as the unique character of each of our cities will be placed on display, but new trails will also be launched from the Downtown Greenways we foresee. This, as people powered users will yearn for ways to reach to and from them from north, south, east and west further and further away.

In knowing how to turn all of its human powered play into an economic engine, while all the businesses throughout the immediate area flourish, a sign on a state office building high above all of this sounds prophetic. It reads:

As its tax coffers are enriched with all the dollars all this greenway activity generates, the State expertly supports it with jobs that maintain and administer it. Toward that end, during the warmer 3/4 of the year, Indianapolis is a hub of government as well as private sponsored liveliness! Lawn cutters and trail sweepers and maintainers of street furniture, etc, all busy about as tents for events are constructed, temporary fencing and wiring are deployed and vendors add more and more two, three and four wheel bikes to all the ones that all happily scurry about.

In honoring such fun, because Indianapolis residents know their own personal income streams are directly or indirectly affected by play, with greenways setting the lead, they make allowance for the slower moving inconvenience cyclists may cause them. Motorists in downtown Indianapolis slow for cyclists and tend to take greater care when passing us. They seem to know to look for us entering the roadway in unexpected places.

There is a consciousness for not just cyclists here but also greenways. Locals have come to learn the value we bring to a community, so the pathways and their users are taken seriously. Where they cross roads, added caution seems to be conferred on motorists in these areas. All along the Monon Trail, for example, for the first seven or 8 miles, there are a small number of intersections. Almost as if it is built into their conditioning, on the few busier ones, car drivers all tend to slow and exercise greater care once they reach them.

Despite the fact that the economic turndown of 2009 pushed Ray off to Florida and now North Carolina, where he is making a living off of his second passion, sailing, the greenway building infrastructure he established is still in place. As such, Indy Greenways remains active in building new Indianapolis greenways, as fueled by the rock solid Greenways Foundation Irvin, founded. What that means is that there is still a funding mechanism that keeps an active dialogue with funders of large projects. This as Indy Greenways still has its database of on the ground greenway construction firms. And because of its work with the many Indianapolis universities, it also knows where to look for the studies these schools have done about how to overcome NIMBY objections (which almost don’t exist here anymore) as well as document the increase in property values for those in close proximity to greenways, etc. What all this means, as our National Bicycle Greenway looks to nationalize their success, is that a lot of the tools we will be in need of are already here waiting to be used and/or built upon!

Some noteworthy words about Indianapolis are in order here. I am riding more here than I ever did in California as I join all ages and fitness levels of cyclists here. Nor is a fixed gear bike or lycra wear required to establish oneself as a legitimate user of the local roads and paths. Nor do enthusiasts only ride in groups on back roads on “training rides”. Cyclists here don’t seem to be in competition with one another. The transportation cyclist, racer, commuter or recreational cyclist don’t seem to stand apart from one another because it is just so big here. There are not coffee shops that collect a certain kind of cyclist because the greenways encourage everyone here to try their hand at bike riding and as their roles switch back and forth, motorists and bike riders seem more accepting of one another.

What also seems to help is that it is not congested here, Users of the road are not fighting each other over who gets to use what parts of it. Here there are as many roads to choose from as there is open space. If you don’t like the pace on one, a few turns will find you on another. Nor is everyone here rushing to get to a freeway. This is so, because with the exception of the one that rings its perimeter about ten miles away, most of the city is free of freeways.

The ease with which people from all walks of life relate to each other here also has to do with population density:

In San Francisco, there are 18,580 people per square mile,
or 870,887 people spread out over 49 square miles.

In Indianapolis, there are 2,328 people per square mile
or 855,164 people spread out over 366 square miles.

Another thing that calms people down here is the very active arts scene. Unlike California, where people are afraid to expend their time making things that won’t help them pay their exorbitant rents or mortgages, galleries and artists and organizations formed to support the arts abound here. As a proven therapy, not only does art soothe one’s nerves, but it helps to keep people off the streets as what is produced adds to the open space and nature’s green that have a prolific presence here.

Nor can one ignore the impact of the Major Taylor Velodrome. As a venue managed by Marian University, the top college bike racing team in the nation, the bicycle speedway, just like the Indy 500 did for cars, is more and more establishing Indianapolis as the bicycle center of America. With a track to help them showcase their wares, national bike component manufacturers such as SRAM, Zipp, TruTrainer, Blue Rub and Silca have all brought their operations here. And as this world class raceway also brings in top bike racing teams from all over America and the world, not only is the city jumping in to support it, but greater and greater numbers of bike riders from far and wide are getting the chance to see first hand the bicycle heaven that can be found here.

If I would have stayed in California, I would have achieved great NBG success if I would have reached the state line at South Lake Tahoe, Nevada. And since the preponderance of cyclists west of the Mississippi were either south of me in the San Francisco Bay area, Santa Cruz, San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, Los Angeles and San Diego or north of me in Sacramento , Chico, Arcata, Eugene, Portland and Seattle, I was often tempted to devote NBG energy to calling for a West Coast Greenway. Being in Indianapolis, now however, I am a little over a hundred miles from the powerful bicycle beacon of Chicago. This while our next NBG Anchor City, Cincinnati, is one hundred miles to the east, Columbus another 100 miles and Pittsburgh, the bicycle gateway to Washington DC, is 200 miles more. Instead of being a pipe dream a continent away from making the Nationali Bicycle Greenway real, the goalpost, Washington DC, is now within reach as we work to connect it to San Francisco!

Thank you Indianapolis.
Your example will help make the National Bicycle Greenway real!!

2025 Post script: My daily riding here has strongly reinforced the notion that Indianapolis has the most bike friendly downtown in the world!! In coming full circle from its former car centric ways, Indianapolis is also, for me, where my grandfather and great grandfather were born (1859, 1888)!!

MNIn 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, catalyst for the National Bicycle Greenway” (HIBA). HIBA endeavors to change the nation’s perception of Indianapolis as being a place filled with speeding automobiles. Per what I have talked about about above, in the last twenty years, because of its internationally renowned Greenway system that feeds its globally celebrated, downtown Cultural Trail, 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 now being a top place for cyclists, it was the bicycle, its clubs, racers and industry captains that had then gone on to help make Indianapolis the world’s original automobile 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 we now know it as.

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 instead of just spin, to another one of its businesses (run by Fisher) making it possible to drive a car past sundown (a breakthrough that can’t be stressed enough), 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 most centrally located city in America, in describing it, 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 also saw how, as we said above here, 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 11-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 the book you are reading now, you will understand why I had needed to be in Indianapolis so I could relaunch the National Bicycle Greenway from where Greenways are a known and highly valued commodity. In daily using and learning about the Cultural Trail, as you will see, I have devised a formula that will replicate it with what we call Downtown Greenways in all 19 of our other NBG Anchor cities that connect San Francisco to Washington, DC.

Having such a model we can point to in place, the NBG can help our other cities show themselves off as they attract bicycle visitors from nearby and from all over the nation and world. As such, it will be the new tourist economies that result that will inspire the construction of bikeways not only to and from our Anchor Cities but from nearby population centers as well. All this as we more and more make the National Bicycle Greenway a crucially important part of how America moves about and how it does its business!

After 40 million people bore witness to Martin Krieg’s return from a two month coma and clinical death with his last bike ride across America, Krieg has been trying to connect the coasts with a bikeway ever since.

Having tried many different approaches in California, he moved to Indianapolis, the Greenway Capital of America in 2018. Now he is learning about all the mechanisms, foundations and groups Ray Irvin, Mr. Greenway himself, put in place to actualize the greenway masterplan the city has adopted.

As he documented the only Downtown Greenway, the Indianapolis Cultural Trail, with a slideshow, he also learned a lot about Indianapolis. Armed with all this information he created a book about Indy.

His Blueprint book explains the NBG Hubs they want to build in all 20 of the Anchor Cities that hold their route together between and including San Francisco and Washington DC. He also explains the methodology they have developed for building 19 other Downtown Greenways in the Anchor Cities they have established with 16 years of Mayors’ Rides

If you agree the foundation Krieg and his volunteers have laid over the last 40+ years is now strong enough to make their dream real, you can become a part of this Movement! Your purchase of this book, makes you an automatic charter member of the NBG and gets your name listed in the book acknowledgements (updated weekly).

As I continue to build out the Facebook Reel for my book “NBG Blueprint”, I sent the 90-second script to Jenifer Aniston. Not expecting a response, I tongue cheek, added, it would be great if she could read it.

Well not only did she reply, her words floored me. She said that she would be happy to, but that she couldn’t do anything until June. OMG.

One of the most famous women in the known universe is going to effectively introduce “NBG Blueprint” to the world. What’s powerful and propitious is that because the Press is always looking for stories about her, they will be sure to make a lot of noise about this publication. As they join with her millions of fans, they will also cause a huge sensation for the National Bicycle Greenway vision.

Thank you, Jenifer. Thank you. Wow.

This 90 second script was built for Facebook Reels. A fast moving slideshow will run.behind the narrator’s voice. Jenifer Aniston has agreed to read this for us!!

After 40 million people bore witness to Martin Krieg’s return from a two month coma, clinical death and right side paralysis with his last bike ride across America, a reporter at the State house in Boston asked him what was next. Tho the answer did not make the nightly news, Krieg has been trying to connect the coasts with a bikeway ever since.

<pic>

To get it known about and in the hope we would attract like minded supporters as he. planted seeds for it, he put on many hats

Pictures for (as narrator speaks)

Bikeroute.Com one of the first bike sites (kiser skyline w/broute)
Mayors’ Rides.(Mrover)
Cycle America Regional Directories
The 17-person Busycle
Pre-Google Bike Maps
Swing for NBG
Festivals
”How America Can Bike and Grow Rich” in Ireland
High Wheel Bicycle riding & events

Having proven with his Eagle HiWheel ride from San Francisco to Salt Lake City in 2009, that there is very little of interest for the NBG between California and Indianapolis,

<mr9 Eagle pix >

in 2018, he moved to Indianapolis, the Greenway Capital of America

<pic>

Now he is learning about all the mechanisms, foundations and groups Ray Irvin, Mr. Greenway himself, put in place to actualize the greenway masterplan the city has adopted.

<pic of ray>

As he documented the only Downtown Greenway in the world, the 10 mile Indianapolis Cultural Trail, with a Virtual Tour slideshow, he also learned a lot about Indianapolis. Armed with all this information he created this book

<pic of Indy book >

Because people regularly tell him they enjoy his writing, always asking about his next book, instead of talking about how his group would connect the coasts with a bike way, he turned his long winded answer into a book

< picture of nbg blueprint >

The book explains the NBG Hubs they want to build in all 20 of the Anchor Cities that hold their route together between and including San Francisco and Washington DC.

< picture of hub schematic >

In explaining the Indianapolis Cultural Trail. this book shows how this bike way has transformed a once dying rust belt city bringing it riches on many levels. He also explains the methodology they have developed for building 19 other Downtown Greenways in the Anchor Cities they have established with 16 years of Mayors’ Rides

< pictures of ICT and canal >

If you agree the foundation Krieg and his volunteers have laid over the last 40+ years is now strong enough to support an interconnected network of Hubs and Downtown Greenways, please help us make it real. You can become a part of this Movement! Your purchase of this book, makes you an automatic charter member of the NBG and gets your name listed in the book acknowledgements (updated weekly).

As we have pointed out, since people are what make the lands one passes through memorable and enjoyable, here is an expanded discussion of the Anchor Cities needed to hold our route across America together. As we use all of the money making tools in this book, augmented by the change in mindset our Public Relations people will bring about to lessen the domination of the private automobile, our population centers will undergo a dramatic transformation. They will become the bicycle villages we have long foreseen. A new economy and people in good physical condition not led by a culture of fast food, hospitals and sickness, will issue from this change.

In addition to the health and social components, from the standpoint of giving the National Bicycle Greenway a strong financial footing, our Anchor Cities are of crucial importance. This is so because they serve as placeholders for the Downtown Greenways each of them will get that make our revenue engines possible. Because few resources and even fewer people will feel called to our vision unless it can generate notable revenue, with Downtown Greenways at their center, here are the main money generating programs that Anchor Cities will spawn:

- NBG Membership/Downtown Lodging Discount Program
- NBG Merchant Discount Program
- Point of Interest Maps (POI)
- Biking Report Cards

These funding sources are so unique, in fact, that like our Downtown Greenways that will revitalize centers of commerce, they also get whole chapters in this book.

In terms of the spec for our Downtown Greenway cities (our Anchor Cities), they will be built around the needs of the highest level user, the long distance touring cyclist. This is so, because by working to attract cyclists from far away, it will remind all those who tune in that Anchor Cities are national in scope. It will encourage all those along the way who are attracted to our offering to think big as they then spread the word of our coast-to-coast vision. In so doing, they will be helping to expand the resources available to us from individuals and corporations wanting to make a large sized difference with their money contributions. Soon, as financed by seed money, with the help of our Public Relations firm, the mission of the National Bicycle Greenway will spread like wildfire.

Designed for the long-haul cyclist, then, once our pedalers leave California, where there are seven anchor cities in the greater San Francisco Bay Area alone, our Anchors are spaced a good number of miles apart until Omaha, Nebraska is reached. From our last California anchor, Sacramento, after climbing over 100 miles through the forests of the Sierras, our cyclists reach Reno, Nevada. From there, the ride changes completely. For the next 500 miles, it is the resulting solitude of the sagebrush filled, high desert lands that creates character as it reinforces the notion that people are what any ride, and for that matter, the game of life, are all about. As beacons calling to themselves, there are two other stops in what we call the Old West.

After Reno, whether along I-80, where the two directions of travel are separated by many hundreds of yards, or along US 50, also known as The Loneliest Highway in America, it is virtual nothingness to Salt Lake City. From the Mecca of Mormonism, signs of life and green begin to reappear for the next 200 miles to Vernal Utah. From there, the flat of sagebrush returns for another 100 miles to Craig, Colorado.

Craig is where 200 miles of beautiful forests will then begin to fully envelop the touring cyclist’s senses. Whereupon, our third Old West anchor city, Boulder, sits at the eastern edge of this Rocky Mountain splendor.

It will be for this Rocky Mountain stretch, from Craig to Boulder, and the many thousands of feet of steady climbing it involves, that West to East touring cyclists will have been prepared. In traveling across Nevada, they will have pedaled across the most Mountainous State in the Union. If they chose the I-80 direction, their many thousands of feet of climbing will have been graded. This as US 50, has steeper climbs and a lot more of them all throughout the riding day

While the nights in Nevada will involve hotels (free camping in sagebrush with snakes is not advised), as well as those for a few days east of Salt Lake City, the camping option does return once the Rockies are reached. In Nevada, lodging is available every 50 to 60 miles whether our cyclists are riding the wide I-80 shoulder or US 50. Along I-80, however, this formula changes when they hit Wendover.

From there, all the way to just before Salt Lake City, for the next 101 miles, there are no services, nor is there any lodging! And by NO services, I mean no water, no rest stops, no food, just pedal as you wonder at the rock sculptures along the edge of the road. This, as light, 70 to 90 mile an hour traffic passes you by far enough away to make it tolerable. Nor is there any shade. There are many ways this stretch can be improved, but HERE is what it looked like to me from 8 feet up on the Eagle Bicycle in 2009

Such harshness, however, will have been made worth it by the Rockies. Outdoor supplies such as tents, tent poles and stakes, rain flys, tarps, candle lanterns, camp stoves, camp stove fuel, fuel bottles, biodegradable soap, toothbrush and soap containers, sewing kits, squeeze tubes (for honey and peanut butter), Swiss survival knives, collapsible water bags, shock cords, freeze dried food, etc, will all have been worth carrying once our cycle tourists reach the Colorado mountain wonderland. It is this they will feel as they look out upon the endless carpets of forests that look more like a painting than something that is real. Their every breath will inhale the sweet smell of the Ponderosa pine that make up the bulk of all the trees that explode from the ground all around them.

From Boulder, the Rockies fade away for the next 30 miles all the way to Denver, our next Anchor City. After which, agriculture begins to enter the equation. Fields of corn, soy beans and a light sprinkling of a few other crops increase until corn dominates the fields on either side of the road once Nebraska is reached. For about 400 miles, this is so most all of the way to Omaha.

After Omaha, hilly, farm-filled terrain with little towns every 10-15 miles will demand a lot of the cyclist’s attention for the next 150 miles or so until he or she gets to Des Moines and then roughly 400 miles later, Chicago.

As the frequency of small towns continues, the path forward for about 200 miles is occasionally interspersed with car free pathways all the way to the home of the NBG and the Greenway Capital of the World, Indianapolis. From Indy to the Nation’s Capital, instead of being many days apart, our next two Anchor Cities, Cincinnati and Columbus, both fall within a long weekend of riding away from one another. Once Pittsburgh is soon reached, the solitude of camping greets them for 330 miles on their Car Free way to the end in Washington DC.

In each of our anchors, our plan, as we will show you, calls for Downtown Greenways, similar to the Indianapolis Cultural Trail. Besides serving local cyclists, the across the city amenities in them will attract cyclists from throughout the region. Since their endpoints will connect to our coast-to-coast route, our Anchor Cities, as we said above, will do well to think of our TransAm cyclists as the design standard for which they will build around.

It is here that because of their heavily loaded bicycles, easily navigable infrastructure is very important for them. This is so because the unwieldy machines they will be on have a bit harder time going up and down curbs, moving through narrow passageways and/or getting around in heavily automobile trafficked areas, etc. By improving the local bike ways for the TransAm cyclist, by making them the standard which they design around, Anchor Cities will also be making their roads and paths attractive to their local cyclists. Doing so will also increase visitation from all those from throughout the region who come for day trips.

Since the TransAm cyclist, the one traveling from one coast to the other, is the highest art form of bicycle touring, in building for them and the heavier loads they carry, everyone wins. As these cities work, for example, to slow the roads down with traffic calming measures, they increase the quality of life for their own residents. As they also work to show their cities off with historical markers, they increase the sense of pride and well-being their local citizenry experiences. Because touring cyclists travel slow enough that they can enjoy such information placards, such tastefully designed signage will add a richness to these areas the experience of which our cyclists will spread near and far with pictures and stories.

Just seeing heavily laden cyclists on Anchor City roads will have an impact on the local citizenry. Not only will the youth be curious, but it will give the local population the inner satisfaction of knowing that their city must be doing something right. They will have the sense that the people who worked their bodies to visit them came because where they live is vibrant and alive, worthy of using one’s muscles to come and explore. Seeing them will also remind them to slow down themselves, that they need to take a breath when they find themselves rushing around.

The sense of peace that these cyclists bring will show that there is more than deadlines, appointments, work and having to be somewhere. There will be the inner knowing that they can vicariously travel with our cyclists until the time is right to perhaps go on long distance bike rides of their own.

NBG TransAm Hall of Fame

In and amongst the mix of touring cyclists, the TransAm cyclist is the one whose opinion is respected the most, their impression of a given locale is given great weight. Similar to the traveling storytellers of the Middle Ages, their words serve as good or bad public relations for the towns and cities through which they pass. While any touring cyclist, sees, smells and hears the world around them at 10 miles an hour, and they are fully ensconced in it, the coast-to-coast cyclist is much listened to because they are seen as being on a mission.

Great respect is conferred upon them because in endeavoring to ride coast-to-coast, they are seen as goal driven. When a man or a woman knows where he or she is going, everyone pays attention to them. This is so because they want to know what they can do to help them get wherever they are trying to get.

Once our Anchor Cities more and more realize they are stepping stones for our Trans Am cyclists, they will do their best to make sure the image our riders broadcast is a positive one. In putting their best foot out for them, they will help to confer a high esteem upon those out for the coast-to-coast long-haul. As such, they will add to the honor the NBG places upon the TransAm cyclist with its NBG TransAm Hall of Fame (that it calls attention to in its NBG Biking Report Cards). As these cities work to sell the prestige of their being an NBG Anchor City, they will feel called to raise the profile of our TransAm cyclists.

One of the ways some will do this is to put our TransAm Hall of Fame on the TV infomercials that run around the clock in hotel rooms to describe the city and hotel in question. When more and more cities adopt this practice, our TransAm Hall of Fame will become an institution that grows in stature.

This will plant a seed, it will make being a part of the Hall an attractive possibility for the youth in our Anchor Cities. Instead of feeling pulled to cars, gangs and drugs, kids will be more likely to admire our touring cyclists, see them as role models. When they see that our long haul cyclists are celebrated for something they themselves can do, it will open their eyes to a new possible future for themselves in the world..

Kids will see they don’t need any special athletic skill, a certain height, weight or skin color or that there is a financial hurdle they must clear. They will see they can become a member of the NBG TransAm Hall of Fame just by doing something most anyone can do. And that is ride a bicycle. Even if they don’t have one, in our NBG Hubs chapter, we will explain how they can earn one for themselves.

In becoming honored in such a way, however, they must be willing to learn the attributes needed to become a TransAm Cyclist. It is here that, if ahead of their trip, they don’t take the time to learn the importance of visualization, organization, goal setting, time management, list making, proper nutrition and the positive mental attitudes required in advance, the long distance road will rough them up pretty bad. They will come to understand that completing their mission as well as the quality of the ride that results, will be directly related to how well they master these skills.

Giving young people role models they can look up to is similar to what the Big Brothers and Big Sisters organization does. Instead of a formalized structure, however, we feel that by just having our long distance cyclists on the road, they will set an example the youth will want to aspire to. It is here they will be able to see for themselves the importance of keeping their own word in being able to walk their talk. They will realize that the every day person they bear witness to straddling a loaded touring machine who came from far away, is just someone who is doing what they said they would do.

As they then follow the example our TransAm Cyclists set, they will learn to take ownership for anything they say they will do. In learning the importance of their word, such knowledge will help them develop the grit, inner strength, confidence, trust and hope that any of the formulas winning at the game of life requires.

You can learn more about the NBG TransAm Hall of Fame HERE.

How Greenway building also supports the community

Nor does the cyclist have to be out for the coast-to-coast long haul to earn appreciation and respect from the people in our Anchor Cities. There are many reasons why being on a bike in them will cause them to be appreciated. In being welcoming hosts, Anchor City locals will know that cyclists, compared to cars and trucks, are good for the planet. With the help of our PR Firm, they will learn more about carbon footprints, and how because those who pedal do not use fossil fuels, their carbon footprint is minimal.

They will also know that cyclists do not require parking lots or 15 or so feet of curb space along the edge of the road when they are stopped. When as many as 20 bicycles can fill the space needed by one car, they will feel confident that the right kind of visitors are coming to their city. Since cyclists are not a threat to children or small animals as they jockey about looking for parking spots, but bring quiet and smiling faces, their visits will not only be welcomed but encouraged. The fact they do not introduce noise or add to the congestion on the roadways will be an added blessing.

This is also so because when any cyclist uses the roads and trails that the local populace has worked to maintain and upgrade, bike trips will be seen as the produce of their efforts. When jobs are created building infrastructure for those who pedal, any time bike riders are seen, there is a far better chance motorists in these areas will be more patient with them.

From the excavators, to the pavers, to the outdoor furniture installers, to the signmakers, to the landscape designers, to the gardeners, to the lawn mowers, etc, Greenway building and bicycle infrastructure improvements provide a livelihood for a large number of people. These are people who pay bills, buy food and maintain households, etc., in and amongst the local community.

This as the bike travelers themselves also spend money in their stores, restaurants and lodging purveyors. There is nothing but victory for everyone concerned when the way is made safe for those who move about under their own power. Going forward, a community of workers will always be there to happily welcome the latest building project for two-wheel wheel travel.

Toward the end of making themselves attractive to the regional day use cyclist, day use parking lots can also be built. They can be positioned where our Greenway meets the edge of the city. Here, vendor carts can crop up with juice bars to offer energy food and drink, even ice cream to those newly arriving or departing cyclists. A weekend bike repair service can also be brought about that fixes flats, and tunes as well as fixes bikes to make them ready for the trails or roads ahead. This service can also sell tires, tubes and any of the cabling a bike may need.

Growing throngs of people will come to demand the National Bicycle Greenway when they become aware of the power of the bicycle to exercise their brain, to keep it young, healthy and sharp. This will be especially, so after growing numbers of jobs are eliminated by AI, robotics and self driving cars with the result being a quest for simplicity. No longer finding themselves on the vicious treadmill of trying to keep up, the newly unemployed will also be happy to learn that most of their transportation and recreation needs are best served by the two-wheel pedal machine.

While I love what he did for America and the world, as the Joe Biden administration pushed electric bicycles, the health of America was on a backwards slide. This is so because of all the new research that is coming out about the importance of using one’s leg muscles for the health of the brain. Besides all the known benefits of riding a bike, from health (mental and physical) to financial and planetary considerations, etc., a growing number of recent studies are making people aware of the fact that riding a bike helps to substantially:

* Lessen the risk of dementia & Alzheimer’s
* Increase a person’s lifespan
* Increase mental power
* Improve memory and focus

all much better than brain games such as scrabble, chess, and crossword puzzles, etc.

If you think these benefits can be achieved with walking, Medical News today says,“Cycling provides sustained aerobic exercise and requires cognitive engagement (coordination, navigation), which enhances brain plasticity more effectively than walking alone.

Nor is tricycle riding an adequate substitute. The fact that you can’t pedal a two-wheel bicycle with your eyes closed but can on a trike speaks volumes about all the countless processes that are taking place to connect the body to the brain when you move forward on two wheels.

This is all so crazy. Man has come up with innumerable inventions to keep us from having to use our legs to move about and yet in the end we are the ones who lose.

(to be continued)

All too often, when cyclists hear that the National Bicycle Greenway is a San Francisco to Washington, DC connection, they think that is great but that it has nothing to do with their own pedaling efforts.

W R O N G !

There are many reasons why this is incorrect reasoning as I will show you here.

To begin, the National Bicycle Greenway will set the precedent for the highest and best ways any city can encourage bicycling as it meets the needs of its pedaling populace. When any population center, anywhere, is looking for ways to make it easier for its non-motorized users of the road to move about, they will be able to take example from what we have done. With ours as a Best Practices model for how to make a downtown people centric and not car centric, this will put a subtle pressure on the city leaders of off-route cities to copy what we have done. They will also feel called to commission their planners and Public Works people to follow our example because of the pictures they won’t be able to help but see. These will get to them from their own constituents who will be circulating photos on social media of what any one of our Anchor Cities will have done.

This will be combined with the steady drumbeat of stories about how any of our Anchor Cities in question are enjoying dramatically increased tourism numbers. As well as greatly enriched coffers from the sales taxes they will have collected from their prosperous merchants. All this as their much envied quality of life will be my much studied,

As catering to the needs of cyclists shines a brilliant spotlight on the great prosperity found in our Anchor Cities, more and more cities all over America will want to copy what we have done. In addition, our Anchor Cities will give a sense of dignity to the act of moving oneself about under their own power. Instead of such activity being marginalized to the edge of the road or what is left over, our Anchors will show that when pedal power is given priority, everyone benefits.

When it becomes widely understood that our Anchors are heaven like sanctuaries because of the bicycle, this will go a long way toward dispelling the notion that we belong on the sidewalk or out of the motorist’s way. When our Anchors show that bikes are a needed part of the downtown mix, this sentiment will be felt all over America.

The people who live in our Anchors will happily embrace pedal power because of all the jobs it creates. Many of their neighbors and friends will have jobs because of the many cottage industries that will crop up. There will be an abundance of juice bars, bike rental, repair and sales shops, locker facilities, shower hubs, delis, coffee shops, ice cream stands, etc.

An abundance of work opportunities will also be found in the busy eateries and lodging purveyors that service all the quiet traffic that results. For those business concerns that are not on the actual Greenway itself, because bikes don’t require parking, as they work to get cyclists in their front door, they will push city leaders to make it safe for bike riders to reach them.

In such a way, they become allies to our effort to more securely move about. This way of thinking will spread to off route cities as well. This is so because when shopkeepers in cities anywhere see the increased business that honoring its cyclists brings about, we, as pedal pushers will benefit. This is because these merchants will not only honor the cyclist, but push for better conditions for them in their own markets.

Because off route cities will see that better cycling conditions increase the money making capacity of their own dealers of goods and services, they will work to make biking easier and safer right where they live, work and play. In using our Anchor Cities as a model, they will want to lay the groundwork for similar revenue engines for themselves.

With regard to employment on the National Bicycle Greenway itself, there will be work in everything from groundskeeping, to kiosk and street furniture maintenance, to lawn mowing, to sign making, to the special crews that will form for grading and paving the pathways and then for their maintenance. Overpass and underpass construction will be another source of employment. The adjacent gardens will also draw the attention of people who specialize in their upkeep.

When it also becomes becomes a widely known fact that the NBG is synonymous with employment opportunities, communities will clamor for our services. Similar to how cities appealed for a position on America’s first coast to coast road, the Lincoln Hwy of 1914, when we expand our Anchor Cities to the feeder lines, there will be a huge push to be considered. In cities north and south of our route, whole committees will be established to petition for their inclusion.

Art will also be one of the features handsomely positioned along the way. Because this is so, a plethora of grants will become available to us. With such monies we will be able to beautify our passageways in such a way that they will become known the world around from all the photos they engender. As memory factories, people will flock to them from every corner of the globe. And when they do, this will give them a working understanding of the message that the bicycle is the cause of all of the wonder they are privy to. When they return home, it will be this newfound appreciation that they will place before their city mothers and fathers.

Corporate America will also take notice. Sections of our Greenway will be dedicated to sponsors who will also maintain them. Here, their names will also appear on kiosks, benches and mileage and direction posts. And when this happens we will have garnered their support. When they promote their part of the right of way, by default, they will be promoting bicycling.

In the same way that the Cultural Trail is the heartbeat of Indianapolis, with Downtown Greenways of their own, all of the people in our Anchor Cities will rally around them. Because its many employment opportunities put food on the table of so many of its residents, the people there will feel like they have a stake in its success. They will want to see as many people as possible enjoying it.

As they share their source of pride, they will also want to show off the unique way in which their Downtown Greenway celebrates their city. As they send this call out to their neighboring communities, this message will reverberate far and wide. Embedded in this communication, of course, will be the power of pedal power.

This will also give cycling a sense of place well beyond the white line at the edge of the road. In the same way their stadiums and arenas have used the baseball, basketball and football played in the city parks and on its streets to legitimize such sport, Anchor Cities will accomplish this for bicycling.

And finally, as pedal power rejuvenates our Anchors, as this awareness spreads far and wide, we will have a bigger presence in the motor user’s awareness. As this consciousness grows louder and larger, no matter where they are, they will feel more and more called to watch out for us. They will have increased respect for us. They will see that we are not in their way but that we are good for wherever it is they may happen to see us.

We are using “this book” to show we have a plan for making our vision real. In circulating it for review, we found it to be a widely respected work that people and businesses wanted to be a part of. They had the sense that this was more than a good read but a Movement they wanted to be able to show their support for.

Business support will credentialize our offering as, by default, it will encourage all of those in their orbit to take a hard look at what we are proposing. Toward that end, it will be seen as something to be shared and taken seriously.

In honoring that thinking, different parts of the book will have ‘brought to you by’ logos. And you, your company or your organization can support it with a Possibility Thinker, Dream Weaver or Actualizer presence. All three levels get you in the book and establish you as an NBG Member!

– For $25, you can have yourself listed as an NBG Possibility Thinker in the book’s end matter. If you want a printed version, that can be had for an additional $5.

– For $75, Dream Weavers get their name listed in the book’s end matter, as well as a handsome, signed paper back printed version they can have for their coffee table.

– For $100, Actualizers get all of the foregoing as well as a signed copy of my hard back book, Awake Again (a one-time best seller in its genre).

Join this Group

Go to our tax deductible donation form HERE to Get in the Book. A book that we foresee one day being in the curriculum of more than a handful of college classrooms across the country…

Foreword by Steve Stevens, fastest man across America on a HiWheel
Preface by Ray R Irvin, aka Mr. Greenway
Introduction

1 Why Our Route
2 Why our SF - DC Connection is Important to Cyclists Everywhere
3 - NBG Anchor Cities and why these population centers will want Bicycle visitors
4 Why the NBG Moved to Indianapolis
5 Rebranding Indianapolis
6 Indianapolis Cultural Trail (only Downtown Greenway in World)
6A Downtown Greenways
6B How Indianapolis NBG Hub will Bring About SF to DC Network of Hubs\
7 NBG Hubs
8 How Virtual Tours & NBG Hubs will Create our Downtown Greenways
9 POI (Point of Interest) Maps
10 NBG Membership Campaign
11 NBG Lodging Discount Program and How it Will Stimulate Downtown Cycling
12 NBG Merchant Discount Program and How it Will Make the Streets Safer for Cycling
13 Anchor City Biking Report Cards (w/Making Airports Accessible)
14 Public Relations Firm and its crucial importance
15 How PR Firms Built Computer Industry Dialogue - HBGR excerpt
16 National Mayors Rides as a Survivor-like TV series

Appendix

Martin Krieg NBG Story - Marking Time for a Result
Positions to be filled
Revenue streams
Book Two Overview
NBG Hall of Fame & pre-cell phone Coast to Coast
TransAm cyclists
Acknowledgments - 30 Years of Authority
Dream Weavers
Possibility Thinkers

In traveling from one coast to the other by bicycle, why have we selected the route that we have? Well to begin, we are starting from San Francisco in the state with the highest concentration of bicyclists. Toward that end, it is helpful to know that outside of California, the rest of the United States. all the way to the Mississippi River, is mostly desolate open lands.

This is important to know because once we leave California, until we reach the Mississippi River, our route is mostly on old US Highways. The beauty of traveling in such a way is that there are good sightlines on US Highways. The up-and-down of climbing is also graded on them. In other words, instead of steep ups and steep downs that are closely spaced next to each other, earth has been moved so that the ascents and descents are smoothed out so they are less precipitous. This gives the rider a chance to pace themself for the hill work at hand.

In getting to the East Coast, the general direction of our route will rely on the first highway across America, the Lincoln Highway of 1914 that originated in Indianapolis. Unlike the Lincoln, however, our route travels over the Rockies and through Colorado. The Lincoln did not go this way because, in relying on roads well north of it, it was not until 1929 that the Rocky Mountains were crossed by Trailridge Highway (a doable 12,183 feet because of all its switchbacks - I pedaled over it in 1979).

In moving east, in the same way that the Lincoln Hwy did, we travel north of Kansas and move across the lower part of Nebraska. This is how 19th Century settlers went from East to West. Now US 30, this was an important part of the Oregon Trail that early pioneers relied on so they could stock up for the journey to California or Oregon. Called the North Platte basin, this was where wild game and water were plentiful.

Now an important corridor, this is also the alignment the 1869 Transcontinental Railroad used. Just as the Lincoln Highway used it, before it was usurped by US 30 (what we ride), now it is used by the speeding cars and trucks of I-80, America’s principal interstate freeway, about half a mile south of it. It also marks the flight path used by coast-to-coast passenger jet travel.

From Nebraska, we head across Iowa to Chicago. Going back to the 19th Century, Chicago was the endpoint of the cattle drives and railroads (bearing cattle) that traveled from the West. Just as all rail and trails led to Chicago in the 1800s, Chicago played an important role in sending people to California when the transcontinental railroad came about.

The transfer hub that brought East Coast passengers to Chicago was Indianapolis. This is why our route travels south from Chicago to get to Indianapolis on our way to the Nations Capital.

It is important to note, that America’s early settlers as well as today’s coast-to-coast motor vehicle travelers all move across this nation well north of St. Louis, Missouri. I point this out because Indianapolis had more of an impact on settling the West than St. Louis ever did. I even devoted a whole chapter to this awareness, called “Indy was the Gateway to the West” in my book “How Indianapolis Built America and How it will Rebuild it with the National Bicycle Greenway”.

From Indianapolis, there will be two ways to get to Columbus and then Pittsburgh and Washington DC. The first will rely on the US 40 alignment that replaced the National Road that Thomas Jefferson signed into law in 1806 (America’s first federally funded highway, it fell 165 miles short of its goal from Washington DC, the Mississippi River). The other will use lightly traveled roads to get to Cincinnati about 100 miles away. And then Columbus another hundred miles more.

From Columbus, instead of staying on US 40 (the Old National Road alignment) to get to Washington DC, we will head to Pittsburgh. This is so because once we reach the former Steel City, the route to the Nations Capital is Car Free for the next 335 miles! Here you will leave the world behind as you enter the time warp of the GAP Trail/C&O Canal Trail to the West to East finish!

I have been talking with Martin since 2002 when I was his contact for Indianapolis when his group annually visited our city. We then got to know each other through our love of bike paths. In giving him some background on how I came to run Indy Greenways, I explained to him the work I had done with the 30-mile Centennial Trail that connected Washington and Idaho.

It was the first interstate bike path and Martin who wanted to connect San Francisco with the East Coast was fascinated. In addition to his group’s National Mayors’ Rides, he and I remained in dialogue several times a year.

I remember him expressing amazement at all the things we were doing to transform this city. For me, it felt like a calling. As a job I felt honored to build on the work begun here by famous planners at the turn of the last century. I also looked forward to going to work every day because of all the people I got to work with. Many like to credit me for all the beautiful greenways in the city. Well, they really could never have happened without all the amazing people here in Indianapolis. I was so lucky to be able to feed off their ideas and energy.

And that is what I see Martin and his book doing. He is planting the seed that will bring his vision into the mainstream in the same way I was fortunate enough to be able to do so here. His ideas are not a lot different from the Greenway Master Plan I drew up for Indianapolis (396,000 square miles). Because it covers an even larger area, his book may lack some of the specifics I built into our document. However, it still paints a picture big thinkers can sink their teeth into. It’s a possibility consciousness for a better way, a travel network that will foster a vast array of new businesses and cottage industries. It’s an important start to something much bigger than any of us!

We so often hear, ‘wouldn’t it be nice’ if this, that or the other were a reality. We don’t even dare to go as far as to dream of getting on a bicycle and riding as far as our legs will take us because the roads were not built to accommodate human power. Being able to take breaks in the large population centers along the way is not something that we can dare to imagine. Forget being able to visit a big city on our bikes, and safely enjoying all it has to offer like we have done here in downtown Indianapolis.

Well, as far-fetched as it sounds, this is what Martin’s book proposes. You see, back when I was pitching Greenways, there were many people who thought I had lost my mind. I was regularly accused of wanting to bring crime and vagrancy into peoples backyards. Now, the Greenway system is an asset that has greatly enhanced property values for those who happen to be on one. They are a source of pride for the city.

In the same way I pushed comfort zones, Martin’s plan to turn 20 American cities into the bicycle villages he foresees will ruffle feathers. In the same way, I required any development in the city to consider its impact on our greenway travel corridors, the major cities along his right of way will have a different set of constraints. These city governments will be required to consider the impact any of the building they do will have on the Downtown Greenways that will have been built in each of them.

Having a plan will bring about a special character for each of the cities, along the entirety of this route. It will attract the best people and resources from each of these regions to make the National Bicycle Greenway the talk of the land. It will charge forward like a train no one can stop. And it is for that reason, that I much look forward to the possibilities that are sure to result from this publication.

As Martin proves in this book, Indianapolis has always been on the vanguard of transportation. As the planet demands that the ways we move about become more and more sustainable, Indianapolis will once again lead the way. As such, I am delighted that this book will turn downtown Indianapolis into a national treasure because of its wildly successful 10-mile Cultural Trail. This family safe travel way will be the model, the 19 other cities between San Francisco and Washington DC will all push to replicate. All this as we push to interconnect them with the National Bicycle Greenway this book is also calling for.

Best regards, Captain Ray

Known internationally as Mr. Greenway, Ray Irvin’s guidance was sought by Greenway planners all over the world. Here in America, he has groomed greenway managers all over the Nation, from California to Florida. A former Councilman, he turned down the chance to be the Mayor of this city. Instead he opted to be the Director of Greenways, a position he formed, and he instilled an impregnable Greenway consciousness in local Hoosiers through four different Mayoral administrations. A globally respected visionary, he established Indy Greenways, the powerful Indiana Greenway Foundation and before he worked his magic at the state level, in Indianapolis alone, he led the charge that built nine different greenways stretching from 3 to 30 miles. Etc, etc…….

btw: As the fluid work in process that the National Bicycle Greenway is, I have made lots of changes to “NBG Blueprint”, the book that shows how we are going to connect the coasts with a bikeway. As new technologies emerge and new ideas come forward, I foresee a constant stream of change.

That said, because a ‘national bicycle greenway how to’ can not be etched into the stone of a book, in lieu of a book, then, I will be using Substack as a framework for our vision. As such, when new members get a copy of. NBG Blueprint, they can download new versions of the manuscript or keep pace on Substack which will function as a blog for us.

The above said, I am putting my entire book on Substack, one chapter per week.

I want to ask you to be a part of this powerful probability with your subscription help. If you will help me, I will put you on our NBG Acknowledgment page

Thanks for her all of you!

As the fluid work in process that the National Bicycle Greenway is, I have made lots of changes to “NBG Blueprint”, the book that shows how we are going to connect the coasts with a bikeway. As new technologies emerge and new ideas come forward, I foresee a constant stream of change.

That said, because a ‘national bicycle greenway how to’ can not be etched into the stone of a book, in lieu of a book, then, I will be using Substack as a framework for our vision. As such, when new members get a copy of. NBG Blueprint, they can download new versions of the manuscript or keep pace on Substack which will function as a blog for us.

The above said, I am putting my entire book on Substack, one chapter per week.

I want to ask you to be a part of this powerful probability with your subscription help. If you will help me, I will put you on our NBG Acknowledgment page

Thanks for her all of you!

After my last bike ride across America reached 40 million people in 1986, I hoped to be able to use the nationwide attention I was getting to connect the coasts with a bikeway. Trying many different approaches, huge festivals, dance events, cross country bike journeys and National Mayors’ Rides, etc, I failed and failed to locate anyone who dared to dream big with me and/or the resources to make a bike connection from San Francisco to Washington, DC real. Along the way, however, in 1993, we did become a 501c3 nonprofit.

Having learned over the years, what all the various stakeholders needed from our Greenway, it became obvious that our vision needed to make it possible or people from all walks of life to have fun. Toward that end, in each of our 20 Anchor Cities, we want to build Indianapolis like (https://tinyurl.com/nbgcult) Downtown Greenways as well as NBG Hubs. In turning all of this into a business, we needed a specific plan that all the people along the way would benefit from. And that is why I have written this book.

It begins with how we plan to get our Greenway from the Golden Gate City to the Nation’s Capitol, and why we have chosen this direction of travel. As you read with us, you will understand why we have chosen the 20 Anchor Cities that hold our route together. Each of them will be built around the NBG Hub and the Downtown Greenway unique to each of these population centers.

A venue local organizations can use to stage activities and money making events of their own, as community centers that serve the cycling and non cycling citizenry, our NBG Hubs will enroll the general public in our vision. On both of the floors, that surround our one huge meeting hall, there will be rooms containing the following that will make our purpose infectious -

Bike Repair Shop (w/bike repair classes) Recycled Bike Sales Bike Rentals Bike Taxi Service Bike Visitors Bureau Library/Computer/Yoga Room NBG Ped Ex Museum/Show Bikes Services for bike travelers Home for other Bike Organizations Human powered power plant NBG Recharge Rooms Bikes Locker

This will also have the effect of making each of our Hubs even more attractive destinations to cyclists from all over the Nation and the world.

We will then show you the many revenue generating programs these population centers will make possible for us. The discussion that follows will also help you understand why our travel way across the middle of the country will benefit cyclists everywhere.

While all of above is taking place, there are the cornerstones for our Greenway from one coast to the other, As the heartbeat for each of our Anchor Cities, Downtown Greenways will also make all of them attractive cycling destinations. They can include everything from protected and/or separated bike lanes, to selectively placed gardens, fountains, water walls, bike present signage alerts, drinking fountains, kiosks, benches, signal timing adjustments, road striping, history placards, etc. and items specific to each area such as bike tunnels and overpasses, etc. All as they make for a heaven like sanctuary through the center of town.

This as the National Bicycle Greenway example goes on to heal the planet while transforming the mental and physical health of its people and uplifting the economies of the nation and the world.

NBG Blueprint

All too often, when cyclists hear that the National Bicycle Greenway is a San Francisco to Washington, DC connection, they think that is great but that it has nothing to do with their own pedaling efforts.

W R O N G !

There are many reasons why this is incorrect reasoning as I will show you here.

To begin, the National Bicycle Greenway will set the precedent for the highest and best ways any city can encourage bicycling as it meets the needs of its pedaling populace. When any population center, anywhere, is looking for ways to make it easier for its non-motorized users of the road to move about, they will be able to take example from what we have done. With ours as a Best Practices model for how to make a downtown people centric and not car centric, this will put a subtle pressure on the city leaders of off-route cities to copy what we have done. They will also feel called to commission their planners and Public Works people to follow our example because of the pictures they won’t be able to help but see. These will get to them from their own constituents who will be circulating photos on social media of what any one of our Anchor Cities will have done.

This will be combined with the steady drumbeat of stories about how any of our Anchor Cities in question are enjoying dramatically increased tourism numbers. As well as greatly enriched coffers from the sales taxes they will have collected from their prosperous merchants. All this as their much envied quality of life will be my much studied,

The people who live in our Anchors will happily embrace pedal power because of all the jobs it creates. Many of their neighbors and friends will have jobs because of the many cottage industries that will crop up. There will be an abundance of juice bars, bike rental, repair and sales shops, locker facilities, shower hubs, delis, coffee shops, ice cream stands, etc.

An abundance of work opportunities will also be found in the busy eateries and lodging purveyors that service all the quiet traffic that results. For those business concerns that are not on the actual Greenway itself, because bikes don’t require parking, as they work to get cyclists in their front door, they will push city leaders to make it safe for bike riders to reach them.

In such a way, they become allies to our effort to more securely move about. This way of thinking will spread to off route cities as well. This is so because when shopkeepers in cities anywhere see the increased business that honoring its cyclists brings about, we, as pedal pushers will benefit. This is because these merchants will not only honor the cyclist, but push for better conditions for them in their own markets.

Because off route cities will see that better cycling conditions increase the money making capacity of their own dealers of goods and services, they will work to make biking easier and safer right where they live, work and play. In using our Anchor Cities as a model, they will want to lay the groundwork for similar revenue engines for themselves.

With regard to employment on the National Bicycle Greenway itself, there will be work in everything from groundskeeping, to kiosk and street furniture maintenance, to lawn mowing, to sign making, to the special crews that will form for grading and paving the pathways and then for their maintenance. Overpass and underpass construction will be another source of employment. The adjacent gardens will also draw the attention of people who specialize in their upkeep.

When it also becomes becomes a widely known fact that the NBG is synonymous with employment opportunities, communities will clamor for our services. Similar to how cities appealed for a position on America’s first coast to coast road, the Lincoln Hwy of 1914, when we expand our Anchor Cities to the feeder lines, there will be a huge push to be considered. In cities north and south of our route, whole committees will be established to petition for their inclusion.

Art will also be one of the features handsomely positioned along the way. Because this is so, a plethora of grants will become available to us. With such monies we will be able to beautify our passageways in such a way that they will become known the world around from all the photos they engender. As memory factories, people will flock to them from every corner of the globe. And when they do, this will give them a working understanding of the message that the bicycle is the cause of all of the wonder they are privy to. When they return home, it will be this newfound appreciation that they will place before their city mothers and fathers.

Corporate America will also take notice. Sections of our Greenway will be dedicated to sponsors who will also maintain them. Here, their names will also appear on kiosks, benches and mileage and direction posts. And when this happens we will have garnered their support. When they promote their part of the right of way, by default, they will be promoting bicycling.

In the same way that the Cultural Trail is the heartbeat of Indianapolis, with Downtown Greenways of their own, all of our Anchor Cities will rally around them. Because its many employment opportunities put food on the table of so many of its residents, the people there will feel like they have a stake in its success. They will want to see as many people as possible enjoying it.

As they share their source of pride, they will also want to show off the unique way in which their Downtown Greenway celebrates their city. As they send this call out to their neighboring communities, this message will reverberate far and wide. Embedded in this communication, of course, will be the power of pedal power.

This will also give cycling a sense of place well beyond the white line at the edge of the road. In the same way their stadiums and arenas have used the baseball, basketball and football played in the city parks and on its streets to legitimize such sport, Anchor Cities will accomplish this for bicycling.

And finally, as pedal power rejuvenates our Anchors, as this awareness spreads far and wide, we will have a bigger presence in the motor user’s awareness. As this consciousness grows louder and larger, no matter where they are, they will feel more and more called to watch out for us. They will have increased respect for us. They will see that we are not in their way but that we are good for wherever it is they may happen to see us.

In what can be thought of as bicycle business routes, our Virtual Tours (all of which will take example from the Indianapolis Cultural Trail) will connect to most of the places cyclists eat, sleep, shop and play in our 20 Anchor Cities. In their final form, as Downtown Greenways, there will also be a healthy sampling of gardens, public art and attractive landscaping with the addition of art installations such as murals, water walls, art fences and fountains, etc. Points of Interest such as cathedrals, museums, sporting venues and notable monuments will be everywhere to be found.

Before our landscape developers beautify the public input they will have received, the right of way will have been suggested by our NBG City Scouts* and signed off on by all the vested interests and the local bike community as we show below. To get this ball rolling, the Scouts will determine the most popular places cyclists go to have their needs taken care of (the food, drink and lodging), along with the points of interest worthy of a visit that are no more than half a mile from these locations. At which point, the greatest preponderance of these stops will appear on the main trunk line that we propose across the city in question. Connecting routes will also be the devised that bring businesses in other parts of the city to our main line.

We feel that for each of our cities,, the route, as well as the actual on the street data needed for an NBG Virtual Tour can be collected during our first summer of work in our cities. During this time, the scouts we will have put in place for this will ride the roads where the business attractions are as they collect information about these parts of the city. They will also learn all they can from the cyclist on the street.

As for the businesses themselves, here is the information they will then load into a form:

Business Type:
Restaurant | Pizzeria | Deli | Sandwich shop | Grocery | Convenience store | Liquor store | Hotel | Air BnB | Hostel | Mountain store | Bike shop | Hardware store | Coffee - Circle one
Address
Phone
Contact
Outdoor seating?
Accessibility by bike 1-10 (with 10 being the best)
# Employees who come by bike?
Bike Parking?
Bikes visible from inside?
Hours
Price range
Bikes allowed in hotel room?

In one of the rooms in the Hub will have established, described HERE, will be the drawing board for each city’s Downtown Greenway. On a wall, on a white board, 10 feet wide by 8 feet tall, will be a much oversized, business district street map. On to it an artist will have drawn all those businesses that have been noted as Points of Interest (POI) in each of our Anchor Cities. The list of stops he or she will be showing will result from what our NBG Scouts have determined as we discussed above.

Throughout the room, story boards with pictures on them will be mounted on easels and sprinkled throughout the space. The snap shots on them, will reflect what any given POI looks like so people can get a better feel for the area in question. These will will be numbered to reference the whiteboard, POI.

Giving a visual for the public to see in such a way will move us well on our way to its actualization. As we flesh out the Downtown Greenways, respect will be conferred on them by the public. This is so because they will know, we have a plan, that we know where we are going. And if you know where you are going, people generally want to help you get there. Our visual will work to galvanize support from locals, businesses, and corporations.

On the whiteboard itself a beginning point will also be designated along with an end point. Each Downtown Greenway will begin on the edge of town, on those bicycle back roads that have been determined to be the best access from the previous Anchor City. Guided by this understanding, it will as well, leave town on those back roads determined to provide the best access to the next Anchor City.

The scout’s work will also be forwarded to the Virtual Tour Director for each city, As a member of our staff, this person will identify all of the vested interests along our proposed right of way. Besides the property owners, these groups will include local Bike Activist organizations, the local Public Works, the Mayor’s Bike Advisory committee, if available, and Bike Co-Ops, if they exist.

For those who control land, outside of the government, most all of their objections will be met by the fact sheet we will have sent to them. Concerns such as property value, crime, vagrancy, etc., will all be addressed in question and answer form. The source for this information will track back to the university studies that the Indiana Greenways organization has on file. Any additional concerns will be mitigated by the fund we will have set aside for road blocks.

Once we have reached agreement with the property owners, and the bike groups have all approved our route, our Virtual Tour Director will then take all this information and, during the off-season, work with our cartographers to get it plugged into the Point of Interest map for each NBG city. HERE, for example, is Indianapolis. It is best viewed on a laptop until we can get all of the (points of interest) icons to run on the same page as the maps on all smartphones.

Once mapped out to connect the stops we have designated, this will cause improvements and enhancements to our route to be suggested as it gets used. Such information will be added to the comment section that associates with our maps. We foresee our virtual tours running in this way for a period of 2 to 3 years.

At this point, we will put the results out to bid. Here we will ask for bids from Landscape Developers and give them one year to draw them up. Called Requests For Proposal (RFP - for this application, these will result in three dimensional computer renderings and/or physical models that reflect the enhancements and upgrades they foresee), we will place what they ultimately create before the public. Through the public meetings that our PR Firm will organize in our large meeting halls, the public will then suggest anything we may have overlooked, such sights to see along the way, etc .

Our Landscape Developer will work with our PR Firm and Anchor City Director to do outreach with city officials and other vested interests. After a year of this, a final vote will be taken. At which Point, soon shovels will hit the ground.

Even before they become Downtown Greenways in all 19 of our other NBG Anchor Cities, our Virtual Tours will begin to revitalize downtowns. As they show people safe ways they can move about, on the local level, they will bring business back that retail centers have lost to online shopping. Because our Virtual Tours will also make it fun to ride these routes with other cyclists, people will start coming back to the eating establishments and other businesses that support all the various other sellers of goods. Because of our Virtual Tours, downtowns will be on their way to becoming happy places not dominated by the car.

In matching the popular places people go on a bicycle to eat, sleep, shop, play, and sightsee with the best way to pedal across our NBG Anchor Cities, we will keep the big picture in mind. While the endpoints of our Virtual Tours will connect to our route across the nation, in the cities themselves, often this will involve connecting business districts to one another.

Here, for example, is the Virtual Tour we did for Reno, NV. Built in 2015 on a shoestring budget and in a massively constricted timeframe of only two weeks, THIS is the general idea of what we have in mind for our Virtual Tours. All of the rhetoric you see there will become the routing you will see at our Point Of Interest maps similar to how we plotted Indianapolis as we showed you above.

In what can be thought of as bicycle business routes, our Virtual Tours (all of which will take example from the Indianapolis Cultural Trail) will connect to most of the places cyclists eat, sleep, shop and play in our 20 Anchor Cities. In their final form, as Downtown Greenways, there will also be a healthy sampling of gardens, public art and attractive landscaping with the addition of art installations such as murals, water walls, art fences and fountains, etc. Points of Interest such as cathedrals, museums, sporting venues and notable monuments will be everywhere to be found.

Before our landscape developers beautify the public input they will have received, the right of way will have been suggested by our NBG City Scouts* and signed off on by all the vested interests and the local bike community as we show below. To get this ball rolling, the Scouts will determine the most popular places cyclists go to have their needs taken care of (the food, drink and lodging), along with the points of interest worthy of a visit that are no more than half a mile from these locations. At which point, the greatest preponderance of these stops will appear on the main trunk line that we propose across the city in question. Connecting routes will also be the devised that bring businesses in other parts of the city to our main line.

We feel that for each of our cities,, the route, as well as the actual on the street data needed for an NBG Virtual Tour can be collected during our first summer of work in our cities. During this time, the scouts we will have put in place for this will ride the roads where the business attractions are as they collect information about these parts of the city. They will also learn all they can from the cyclist on the street.

As for the businesses themselves, here is the information they will then load into a form:

Business Type:
Restaurant | Pizzeria | Deli | Sandwich shop | Grocery | Convenience store | Liquor store | Hotel | Air BnB | Hostel | Mountain store | Bike shop | Hardware store | Coffee - Circle one
Address
Phone
Contact
Outdoor seating?
Accessibility by bike 1-10 (with 10 being the best)
# Employees who come by bike?
Bike Parking?
Bikes visible from inside?
Hours
Price range
Bikes allowed in hotel room?

In one of the rooms in the Hub will have established, described HERE, will be the drawing board for each city’s Downtown Greenway. On a wall, on a white board, 10 feet wide by 8 feet tall, will be a much oversized, business district street map. On to it an artist will have drawn all those businesses that have been noted as Points of Interest (POI) in each of our Anchor Cities. The list of stops he or she will be showing will result from what our NBG Scouts have determined as we discussed above.

Throughout the room, story boards with pictures on them will be mounted on easels and sprinkled throughout the space. The snap shots on them, will reflect what any given POI looks like so people can get a better feel for the area in question. These will will be numbered to reference the whiteboard, POI.

Giving a visual for the public to see in such a way will move us well on our way to its actualization. As we flesh out the Downtown Greenways, respect will be conferred on them by the public. This is so because they will know, we have a plan, that we know where we are going. And if you know where you are going, people generally want to help you get there. Our visual will work to galvanize support from locals, businesses, and corporations.

On the whiteboard itself a beginning point will also be designated along with an end point. Each Downtown Greenway will begin on the edge of town, on those bicycle back roads that have been determined to be the best access from the previous Anchor City. Guided by this understanding, it will as well, leave town on those back roads determined to provide the best access to the next Anchor City.

The scout’s work will also be forwarded to the Virtual Tour Director for each city, As a member of our staff, this person will identify all of the vested interests along our proposed right of way. Besides the property owners, these groups will include local Bike Activist organizations, the local Public Works, the Mayor’s Bike Advisory committee, if available, and Bike Co-Ops, if they exist.

For those who control land, outside of the government, most all of their objections will be met by the fact sheet we will have sent to them. Concerns such as property value, crime, vagrancy, etc., will all be addressed in question and answer form. The source for this information will track back to the university studies that the Indiana Greenways organization has on file. Any additional concerns will be mitigated by the fund we will have set aside for road blocks.

Once we have reached agreement with the property owners, and the bike groups have all approved our route, our Virtual Tour Director will then take all this information and, during the off-season, work with our cartographers to get it plugged into the Point of Interest map for each NBG city. HERE, for example, is Indianapolis. It is best viewed on a laptop until we can get all of the (points of interest) icons to run on the same page as the maps on all smartphones.

Once mapped out to connect the stops we have designated, this will cause improvements and enhancements to our route to be suggested as it gets used. Such information will be added to the comment section that associates with our maps. We foresee our virtual tours running in this way for a period of 2 to 3 years.

At this point, we will put the results out to bid. Here we will ask for bids from Landscape Developers and give them one year to draw them up. Called Requests For Proposal (RFP - for this application, these will result in three dimensional computer renderings and/or physical models that reflect the enhancements and upgrades they foresee), we will place what they ultimately create before the public. Through the public meetings that our PR Firm will organize in our large meeting halls, the public will then suggest anything we may have overlooked, such sights to see along the way, etc .

Our Landscape Developer will work with our PR Firm and Anchor City Director to do outreach with city officials and other vested interests. After a year of this, a final vote will be taken. At which Point, soon shovels will hit the ground.

Even before they become Downtown Greenways in all 19 of our other NBG Anchor Cities, our Virtual Tours will begin to revitalize downtowns. As they show people safe ways they can move about, on the local level, they will bring business back that retail centers have lost to online shopping. Because our Virtual Tours will also make it fun to ride these routes with other cyclists, people will start coming back to the eating establishments and other businesses that support all the various other sellers of goods. Because of our Virtual Tours, downtowns will be on their way to becoming happy places not dominated by the car.

In matching the popular places people go on a bicycle to eat, sleep, shop, play, and sightsee with the best way to pedal across our NBG Anchor Cities, we will keep the big picture in mind. While the endpoints of our Virtual Tours will connect to our route across the nation, in the cities themselves, often this will involve connecting business districts to one another.

Here, for example, is the Virtual Tour we did for Reno, NV. Built in 2015 on a shoestring budget and in a massively constricted timeframe of only two weeks, THIS is the general idea of what we have in mind for our Virtual Tours. All of the rhetoric you see there will become the routing you will see at our Point Of Interest maps similar to how we plotted Indianapolis as we showed you above.

It is here that our flagship operation, our Indianapolis NBG Hub will get the National Bicycle Greenway and our Hubs known about far and wide. As the main headquarters for all the hubs that will follow, every part of its main meeting hall will be designed to meet the highest possible standard. It won’t be long before it is known across the land for its superlative quality.

Top entertainers from all over the world will all perform here. It well, give added purpose to their work. Besides being able to take a nonprofit deduction they will feel good about knowing their work will be helping to make our Greenway real.

Recording artists such as Bruce Springsteen, Jennifer Lopez, Barry Manilow, Metallica, the Backstreet Boys and Sammy Hagar, himself a passionate cyclist, will all want to be able to say they performed for us.

From the stage, Cirque du Soleil will, create one of their amazing shows. We also look forward to the magic of David Copperfield and Penn & Teller as well as the comedy of Jerry Seinfeld, Kevin Hart: and Nate Bargatze.

Like everything else that Indianapolis does, as a performance venue, our meeting hall will be world class. Its acoustic perfection will make it an honor for musicians to play it. It will be on a par with Radio City Music Hall, Madison Square Garden, and the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville.

Our meeting hall development team will implement all the best practices to bring about a superior performance stage.

<snip>

HIBA shows, how, in coming full circle back to now being a top place for cyclists, it was the bicycle, its clubs, racers and industry captains that had then gone on to help make Indianapolis the world’s original automobile 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 we now know it as.

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 instead of just spin, to another one of its businesses (run by Fisher) making it possible to drive a car past sundown (a breakthrough that can’t be stressed enough), 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 most centrally located city in America, in describing it, 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 also saw how, as we said above here, 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 11-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 the book you are reading now, you will understand why I had needed to be in Indianapolis so I could relaunch the National Bicycle Greenway from where Greenways are a known and highly valued commodity. In daily using and learning about the Cultural Trail, I have devised a formula that will replicate it with what we call Downtown Greenways in all 19 of our other NBG Anchor cities that connect San Francisco to Washington, DC.

Having such a model we can point to in place, the NBG can help our other cities show themselves off as they attract bicycle visitors from nearby and from all over the nation and world. As such, it will be the new tourist economies that result that will inspire the construction of bikeways not only to and from our Anchor Cities but from nearby population centers as well. All this as we more and more make the National Bicycle Greenway a crucially, important part of how America moves about and how it does its business!

After my five years in Ireland raising my son Cayo till he was four years old, the National Bicycle Greenway organization that I got nonprofit status for in 1993, was disarrayed and had lost a lot of its luster. Without my wife, or son, I returned to America in 2015 to Davis, CA, thinking I could bring the burn back with an NBG relaunch from what some people refer to as the “Bike Capital of America”. Well, in terms of bicycle facilities, on a per square mile (only 9) or per capita (65K) basis, Davis has no equal (HERE are all the biking amenities).

However surrounded on all four sides by farmland, as I-80 (what the Lincoln Hwy, America’s first coast-to-coast highway, yielded to) thunders through it, not only is its human power infrastructure built out, but almost like an island, even tiny bits of its example are extremely hard to replicate, even in the three tiny farm towns ten miles away. This, while it’s connection to Sacramento, the State Capitol, at only 12 miles away, is directly adjacent to busy Interstate 80 (separated by a concrete, jersey wall and cyclone fencing) and is only navigable by the most hardy of cyclists.

Nor was Davis an attractive destination for those who may have come from out of town to the national events I tried to stage there (while Indianapolis has the top rated airport in North America, Davis does not have a commercial airport). In the summer, when most people do their bike rides, Davis, a college town/bedroom community, rolls up the sidewalks of its small downtown well before noon. It just gets so hot there that locals defer to their air conditioned homes, cars, offices or classrooms. Unlike Indianapolis, the Greenway Capital of America (and a city with the most bike friendly downtown in the world), where in the summer, people outside are everywhere, Davis is like a ghost town quietly filled with the well manicured yards of an outsized preponderance of large-sized homes.

Well before I ended up in what I thought was America’s top bicycle heaven, in the 1990’s, while I was in the far more temperate San Francisco Bay Area, as I watched Ray Irvin, globally known as Mr Greenway, transform a dying city with Greenways, I also listened to him gush about the all new Indianapolis Greenway scene that was beginning to emerge. And when I saw it for myself in August 2017, I knew this was where the NBG and I needed to be.

When I was in Ireland (2010-2015) writing my book, “How America Can Bike and Grow Rich, the National Bicycle Greenway in Action” (HBGR), I acquired an in depth understanding of the road that built America, the Lincoln Highway of 1914. Toward that end, I used the Castlebar, Ireland (pop 12,068) library to bring in reading material about the Lincoln from all over America. It was then that I became aware that not only did it pass through Davis, CA, but that Indianapolis is where the movement for it began. And the force who led the charge for it was a former HiWheel racer and bike shop owner named Carl Fisher (HERE is the chapter I wrote about him in “How Indianapolis Built America and How it will Rebuild It with the National Bicycle Greenway”).

In 1909 Fisher led the charge with three others to honor Mayor Bookwalter’s request for a speedway when they built the world famous Indy 500 car racing track. Also in 1909, his 5-story Fisher Automobile Company was completed to become the first automobile show room in the world. Soon, the world’s first Auto Row led from it. For half a mile, on Capitol Ave, the street was lined with car related sales and services (tires, brakes, upholstery, bodywork, etc.).

Besides selling cars, Fishers turn-of-the-century skyscraper also served as the home office for the first car headlight business, Presto-Lite. From his Michigan and Capital location (now a massive condominium/apartment complex anchored by Kroger’s), he managed factories all over America that made it possible to drive a car at night.

Through Presto-O-Lite, Fisher made car headlights affordable and widely available. This allowed the public to drive to recreation and errands when the sun went down. It also meant they could work longer hours. As a result, the productivity of factories all over America increased dramatically.

Here at his new building, was also the braintrust for the national highway he foresaw. In HBGR, in the chapter, “Lessons Learned from America’s First Coast-to-coast Highway in Building the NBG”, I talk about how Fisher established the Lincoln Highway Administration (LHA) to build will for his vision of a coast-to-coast car road with Indianapolis at its center. From Indianapolis, once the home of 97 different car manufacturers, he promoted tirelessly and the red line he drew on a map connecting Indy with San Francisco became a reality in July of 1913 when his Indianapolis based organization used 17 cars and two trucks as a part of the 1,700 mile Hoosier Tour (also called the Indiana–Pacific Indiana Automobile Manufacturers Association Tour) to blaze the exact route they would work to flesh out.

In the end, in deference to one of his sponsors, William Packard of Detroit based Packard Motor Car Company, the LHA route across America would use existing roads just north of Indianapolis to get to Chicago from New York. From there, they would rely on old stagecoach, lines, and old Indian and wildlife trails, all lightly etched out in the dirt, to follow the transcontinental railroad alignment. The LHA then went on to rally America around the Lincoln with everything from encouraging church sermons and poetry about it to noteworthy national Boy Scout participation, a weekly radio show, even a World War I victory celebration on it that included a young Gen. Eisenhower, the former president and father of the interstate, nearly half a century later, etc, etc,.

The Lincoln reached from Times Square in New York City to the World’s Fair in San Francisco in 1915 as a smorgasbord of different roads, most all of them, as we just saw, dirt west of Chicago. As they continued to work to make their coast-to-coast highway real, Fisher and his group, also had the added financial support from his wealthy friends including, Thomas Edison, former U.S. Presidents Theodore Roosevelt as well as Woodrow Wilson, the first U.S. President to make frequent use of an automobile for relaxation.

By invoking the image of Abraham Lincoln, the LHA had succeeded at making it seem patriotic for people from all walks of life to drive, and as more and more motorists, in their newly minted automobiles, flocked to it every year, the Lincoln Hwy sparked a road building frenzy that continued unchecked all over the USA well into the 1970’s. Ultimately, as America’s love affair with the car and the highways built to accommodate it continued to explode, the Lincoln got swallowed up by the numbered highways of the Federal Highway Administration.

Like many big cities in the USA, Indianapolis got run over by all the cars its Lincoln success had engendered. It then started to die when most of its manufacturing began to leave the country in the 70’s and 80’s.This is where Ray Irvin began to make a difference. In the early 90’s he started building the internationally recognized Indy Greenways network. And by the end of the millennium, as more and more Greenways got added, more and more jobs and young people began to flock to Indianapolis.

How could they not?

In addition to the 18-mile long Monon Trail, the downtown canal towpath Ray helped turn into a place of magic and the world renowned, 11-mile Indianapolis Cultural Trail that reenergized many of the sidewalks Indy merchants do their business from, these and other greenway trophies continue to make Indianapolis central look like one giant college campus. In this podcast – (transcription), Ray Irvin prophecized this in 2006 when I did an interview with him. To the green and the play that is everywhere, add the fact that as the Crossroads of America, that 50% of the USA is all within an 8-hour car drive, and you will see why Indianapolis has become such a powerful magnet to workers who bring innovation and exciting youthful energy to this city.

As for myself, when I first moved here, in keeping faith with aligning our National Bicycle Greenway effort with the power of the Lincoln Highway that built the America we know today, because homes are still so surprisingly affordable here, I was able to buy a 19th Century Victorian farmhouse just a few blocks from Washington Street, aka, US 40, the original National Road! Surrounded by history, I was, five or so blocks from the old Duesenberg Motorworks factory.

Legendary as a regular winner in the early days of the Indy 500 speedway, their luxury automobiles selling for as much as a quarter million dollars in 2018 value, were the finest money could buy. In fact, from 1919 to 1937 the Duesenberg was the Rolls Royce of its day and was the source of the saying, “it’s a Duesy!” used to describe the best of the best.

Headed towards downtown less than a mile away, is the bridge that has now become a center of play for Indianapolis locals. In crossing the lazy White River, the old Washington St Bridge of 1870 (it replaced the pioneering wood covered National Road bridge of 1834, one hundred feet away), it once stood out as the gateway to the downtown Indianapolis Auto Row we talked about earlier. Now, however, under Ray Irvin’s direction, the bridge, closed to cars, has become a tastefully designed promenade that is always filled with people and activity as it connects the Indianapolis Zoo to White River State Park (WRSP) that Ray also helped to bring about.

Coming back to the National Road Wood covered bridge, before the Lincoln. Highway built America as we said, it was, as I, and several respected historians, feel, the true gateway to the west <why this is so>.

Sadly, dismantled in 1902, nearly half a million people used the National Road wood covered bridge to get to the gold of California or the homestead land of Oregon as it sent an incalculable tonnage of goods west from the factories that sprang up all along the nearby riverfront

On the east side of the river is where John McCormick built the first cabin in Indianapolis in 1920. It was originally situated on the other side of Fall Creek from the bridge before the waterway got rerouted in 1875 per this link.

Now all of this sits at the foot of downtown and the wildly popular. Indianapolis Cultural Trail (Virtual Tour), where it passes through White River State Park (WRSP). At WRSP, besides a world class, outdoor concert stage, it also features 3 and 4-wheel bike rentals, a community garden, sprawling lawns and direct access to the beginning of the world class Indy Canal that we’ll talk about below.

As for the Indianapolis Cultural Trail (ICT), as a piece of bicycle infrastructure unlike any, anywhere else in the world, I could not keep the National Bicycle Greenway in California after I rode it. As the template for what we want to replicate in all 19 of our other Anchor Cities, we have given it its own chapter in the words ahead here.

With such a way of moving people about, not only will tourism explode as the unique character of each of our cities will be placed on display, but new trails will also be launched from the Downtown Greenways we foresee. This, as people powered users will yearn for ways to reach to and from them from north, south, east and west further and further away.

In knowing how to turn all of its human powered play into an economic engine, while all the businesses throughout the immediate area flourish, a sign on a state office building high above all of this sounds prophetic. It reads:

As its tax coffers are enriched with all the dollars all this greenway activity generates, the State expertly supports it with jobs that maintain and administer it. Toward that end, during the warmer 3/4 of the year, Indianapolis is a hub of government as well as private sponsored liveliness! Lawn cutters and trail sweepers and maintainers of street furniture, etc, all busy about as tents for events are constructed, temporary fencing and wiring are deployed and vendors add more and more two, three and four wheel bikes to all the ones that all happily scurry about.

In honoring such fun, because Indianapolis residents know their own personal income streams are directly or indirectly affected by play, with greenways setting the lead, they make allowance for the slower moving inconvenience cyclists may cause them. Motorists in downtown Indianapolis slow for cyclists and tend to take greater care when passing us. They seem to know to look for us entering the roadway in unexpected places.

There is a consciousness for not just cyclists here but also greenways. Locals have come to learn the value we bring to a community, so the pathways and their users are taken seriously. Where they cross roads, added caution seems to be conferred on motorists in these areas. All along the Monon Trail, for example, for the first seven or 8 miles, there are a small number of intersections. Almost as if it is built into their conditioning, on the few busier ones, car drivers all tend to slow and exercise greater care once they reach them.

Despite the fact that the economic turndown of 2009 pushed Ray off to Florida and now North Carolina,where he is making a living off of his second passion, sailing, the greenway building infrastructure he established is still in place. As such, Indy Greenways remains active in building new Indianapolis greenways, as fueled by the rock solid Greenways Foundation Irvin, founded. What that means is that there is still a funding mechanism that keeps an active dialogue with funders of large projects. This as Indy Greenways still has its database of on the ground greenway construction firms. And because of its work with the many Indianapolis universities, it also knows where to look for the studies these schools have done about how to overcome NIMBY objections (which almost don’t exist here anymore) as well as document the increase in property values for those in close proximity to greenways, etc. What all this means, as our National Bicycle Greenway looks to nationalize their success, is that a lot of the tools we will be in need of are already here waiting to be used and/or built upon!

Some noteworthy words about Indianapolis are in order here. I am riding more here than I ever did in California as I join all ages and fitness levels of cyclists here. Nor is a fixed gear bike or lycra wear required to establish oneself as a legitimate user of the local roads and paths. Nor do enthusiasts only ride in groups on back roads on “training rides”. Cyclists here don’t seem to be in competition with one another. The transportation cyclist, racer, commuter or recreational cyclist don’t seem to stand apart from one another because it is just so big here. There are not coffee shops that collect a certain kind of cyclist because the greenways encourage everyone here to try their hand at bike riding and as their roles switch back and forth, motorists and bike riders seem more accepting of one another.

What also seems to help is that it is not congested here, Users of the road are not fighting each other over who gets to use what parts of it. Here there are as many roads to choose from as there is open space. If you don’t like the pace on one, a few turns will find you on another. Nor is everyone here rushing to get to a freeway. This is so, because with the exception of the one that rings its perimeter about ten miles away, most of the city is free of freeways.

The ease with which people from all walks of life relate to each other here also has to do with population density:

In San Francisco, there are 18,580 people per square mile,
or 870,887 people spread out over 49 square miles.

In Indianapolis, there are 2,328 people per square mile
or 855,164 people spread out over 366 square miles.

Another thing that calms people down here is the very active arts scene. Unlike California, where people are afraid to expend their time making things that won’t help them pay their exorbitant rents or mortgages, galleries and artists and organizations formed to support the arts abound here. As a proven therapy, not only does art soothe one’s nerves, but it helps to keep people off the streets as it adds to the open space and nature’s green that have a prolific presence here.

Nor can one ignore the impact of the Major Taylor Velodrome. As a venue managed by Marian University, the top college bike racing team in the nation, the bicycle speedway, just like the Indy 500 did for cars, is more and more establishing Indianapolis as the bicycle center of America. With a track to help them showcase their wares, national bike component manufacturers such as SRAM, Zipp, TruTrainer, Blue Rub and Silca have all brought their operations here. And as this world class raceway also brings in top bike racing teams from all over America and the world, not only is the city jumping in to support it, but greater and greater numbers of bike riders from far and wide are getting the chance to see first hand the bicycle heaven that can be found here.

If I would have stayed in California, I would have achieved great NBG success if I would have reached the state line at South Lake Tahoe, Nevada. And since the preponderance of cyclists west of the Mississippi were either south of me in the San Francisco Bay area, Santa Cruz, San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, Los Angeles and San Diego or north of me in Sacramento , Chico, Arcata, Eugene, Portland and Seattle, I was often tempted to devote NBG energy to calling for a West Coast Greenway. Being in Indianapolis, now however, I am a little over a hundred miles from the powerful bicycle beacon of Chicago. This while our next NBG Anchor City, Cincinnati, is one hundred miles to the east, Columbus another 100 miles and Pittsburgh, the bicycle gateway to Washington DC, is 200 miles more. Instead of being a pipe dream a continent away from making the Nationali Bicycle Greenway real, the goalpost, Washington DC, is now within reach as we work to connect it to San Francisco!

Thank you Indianapolis. Your example will help make the ANational Bicycle Greenway real!!

2023 Post script: My daily riding here has strongly reinforced the notion that Indianapolis has the most bike friendly downtown in the world!! In coming full circle from its former car centric ways,

Indianapolis is also, for me, where my grandfather and great grandfather were born (1859, 1888)!!