Introduction NBG Blueprint - Interconnecting America with a Network of NBG Hubs
Interconnected Downtown Greenways
In Indianapolis, on Christmas day, in 1890, Arthur Newby, started one of the most important companies the world has ever known, the leader of the Industrial Revolution - Diamond Chain. Inspired by his lead, 134 years later, I used much of my 2024 Indianapolis Christmas to finalize the rewrite of this introduction to this book that can't help but bring about the National Bicycle Greenway.
In order to connect the coasts with a TransAm Bikeway, in actualizing all of the wonder this book contains, here is what was missing from the first edition of this publication - our 20 NBG Hubs! Because what I see for them is so propitious, I had thought I could build Book 2 around them. However, based upon the feedback I am getting and the more I study and write about making our coast to coast bicycle highway real, the more clear it becomes to me that they are the prime mover for this whole movement.
NBG Hubs are the nucleus for the National Bicycle Greenway!
Toward this end, the bicycle centers I wrote about in "How America Can Bike and Grow Rich, the National Bicycle Greenway in Action", while I was in Ireland will become the focus of our effort. Because of the very large meeting halls in them, our NBG Hubs will garner the support of a large number of the cyclists and non-cyclists along the way in our mission to interconnect the USA with the 20 pedal playgrounds we foresee. Because of the events and activities we will host, they will attract a wide cross-section of people. This, as our Hubs will also serve as the catalyst for the Indy like Downtown Greenways that will define our population centers, the Anchor Cities between San Francisco and Washington, DC.
In terms of the background for the words ahead, by combining 1. the work our NBG Scouts did from 1998 to 2010 with 2. the GPS input that came our way when we had interactive maps at our site (2007-2009) and then 3. the crowd sourced bike route data that Google began putting on line in 2009, in 2014, we put the San Francisco to Washington, DC connection we developed onto the NBG home page - BikeRoute.com. The beginning of this book will explain why in making use of certain lightly trafficked US Highways that cross America, we have chosen this direction of travel.
Our SF-DC connection is important to cyclists everywhere . This is so because it can be thought of as a demonstration project for how bicycling can stimulate the economies of all those communities through which it passes. This as it enriches them with increased tourism and improved quality of life. In time, this will become the trunk line that will be fed by similar bicycle highways that criss cross America from north to south and east to west.
In making SF-DC real, this book will show you why and how our Anchor Cities are a crucially important part of our plan to connect the coasts with a bicycle highway. You will see how we will use our Downtown Lodging and Merchant Discount programs, to turn these population centers into bicycle villages, where the cyclist is not only welcome, but the preferred user of the roads and paths. As you will also see in the Merchant Discount program chapter, it will be in the best interest of the purveyors of goods and services, as well as all those in their orbit, to not only be on the lookout for cyclists but to push their city leaders to make conditions safe for them to move about.
So that you can see more of why our Anchor Cities are so important, our discussion will deliberate upon the one downtown between San Francisco and Washington, DC. that stands tall above all of them - downtown Indianapolis. To strengthen our push to turn all of our Anchor Cities into powerful Indy like magnets, in 2018 we moved our operation to Indianapolis which has no equal in terms of the impact it has had on America’s Lifestyle and Landscape. The most centrally located big city in the USA, Indy is also known as the Crossroads of America
as well as the Amateur Sports Capital of the world
The real Gateway to the West, as we explain HERE, and Birthplace of the Automobile Industry, Indy has come full circle to it now being recognized as the Greenway Capitol of the World with also the only Downtown Greenway on Planet Earth.
Called the Indianapolis Cultural Trail (ICT), I get to experience the ICT every day! I have been able to see firsthand, how the ICT has raised the profile of the cyclist and dramatically uplifted the economies of the city, the region and the state. In the words ahead, I will use a whole chapter to explain the Indianapolis Cultural Trail. By also showing the colossal impact the ICT has had on what was once a dying Rust Belt city, massive in size, you will understand why building Indy-like Downtown Greenways has become the mission of the NBG. Hopefully this discussion will show you why we look forward to establishing ICT-like Downtown Greenways in all 19 our other NBG Anchor Cities.
It is also here that you will see how our NBG Hubs will make our Downtown Greenways a reality. As the bike central for each of our Anchors, in the chapter that explains our Hubs, we talk about how all of our Downtown Greenways will be built around them. As such, you will also learn how it will be the cyclists that patronize our Hubs who will work with our landscape developers to spec out the roads and paths that our Downtown Greenways will utilize.
By building 19 other Downtown Greenways into our Anchor Cities, you will see how this will have the effect of turning them into bicycle playgrounds. And when this becomes the case, as I will explain, they will begin to feel like small villages happily manageable by human powered propulsion. When people can reclaim their cities for themselves, and not their motor vehicles, the element of danger will be removed from moving about in them. As you read these words, soon, you will understand why our NBG cities will feel safe. They will feel like fun places to be, to explore, and just to be a part of.
Hopefully the words that follow will make you question the relationship people have with their automobiles. When humans and not the machines that move them about rule the downtown streets of our Anchor Cities, the sanctuary like peace that results will make them magnetic to all of the other cities, towns, and municipalities that lie at their edges. In the same way the cities in our agrarian past were defined by roads that fed the markets at their center, trails and roads made safe for bikes, will all radiate out from the NBG Hubs in our Anchor City downtowns so people of the region can easily access them. As you will see, at present, the ICT is fed by three different Greenways. This, as there are trails that feed those trails while others are planned to do so.
As you begin to think about the impact car trips have on where people live, work and play, you will understand why our Anchor Cities are structured with bicycle play at their core. It will make sense to you why their centers of commerce will come alive as people take part in the new way of doing business our National Bicycle Greenway will have made possible. Under our plan, as we provoke thought here, you will long for the time when people, and not the space grabbing, noise perpetrating machines they travel in will, as can't be said enough, rule the downtown streets. The focus will change from moving as many motor vehicles as possible through the downtown streets, to slowing them down as traffic engineers work to make them safe for human beings. It is this that will benefit the merchants as they find more and more self-propelled travelers entering their front doors. To help them even more, in the chapters ahead, we show you, as I keep saying, how we will make this possible with our NBG Merchant and Lodging Discount programs.
To make sure the reader understands how Indianapolis has always been a trend setter, the Indianapolis chapters are very important part of this book. If you've already read, "How Indianapolis Built America and How it will Rebuild it with the National Bicycle Greenway”, the Indy chapters are synopsized versions of it. They are significant because, in showing the huge impact Indianapolis, once the wealthiest city in the USA, has had on the rest of this Nation, you will see that this city long has led the way
Beginning with:
- the first road into the frontier that nearly half a million people used (once the National Road bridge over the White River was completed in 1834) to go west,
- with its first in the world train station hub, Union Train Station of 1852 that relocated many hundreds of thousands of people of the East to San Francisco with as many as 200 trains a day once the transcontinental railroad was completed in 1869,
- with it being home to the leader of the Industrial Revolution, Diamond Chain,
- with its being the Birthplace of the Automobile Industry and home to the most carmakers of any American city, 97,
- with the Indy 500 (the world’s first test track and still the largest spectator event in the world),
- in alignment with it being the Racing Capital of the World, it is also home to the the historic Major Taylor Velodrome, one of a handful of operating velodromes in the United States and the home of track cycling for Marian University, the top college bike racing team in America
- with it being the catalyst for the first Coast to Coast Road, the Lincoln Hwy of 1914, - with once the largest inter-urban train system in the country,
- with the first car headlight and all of its other breakthrough industries, etc,
setting the trends is familiar turf for Indianapolis.
In the same way Indianapolis reinvented itself with its Downtown Greenway, the Indianapolis Cultural Trai (and all all the Greenways that feed it), we can reinvent the rest of America with a network of Indy-like Downtown Greenways!
In bringing our Downtown Greenways about, I also explain the Virtual Tours program that will prescribe the roads and paths they will use. Epicentered around our NBG Hubs and set to run from east to west across our Anchor Cities, these tours will stop at all the places cyclists go to eat, sleep, shop, play and sightsee. On the ground for two to three years as we work out all of the kinks, as I will be showing you, even before they become Downtown Greenways, they will make our NBG Merchant and Lodging programs possible.
Once the trial period is complete, as show you, our teams of landscape developers will work with all the feedback that results and with our Hub cyclists to turn these Virtual Tours into Downtown Greenways, With access points at either end to our Coast to Coast route, this will enable the cross country cyclist to get across our Anchor Cities easily and enjoyably. As they show off the unique character of each of them, Downtown Greenways will also increase bicycle day trips from regional cyclists as well as from those outside the city core.
While all of this is taking place, to underwrite it, there are several ways that we will generate revenue. First, I will explain the Membership Campaign we will use this book to stimulate. It will be a benefit all new members receive. With the authority it will give us, as I will explain, it will help us sell our NBG Anchor City Biking Report Cards and Point of Interest Maps. both of which have huge advertising revenue potential. Having this book out there will bring a lot of attention to them. As our maps show cyclists where the goods and services are in our Anchor Cities, merchants will use them as a great place to communicate their message as this also enriches our own coffers. Each Anchor City will get a Point of Interest Map - HERE is Indianapolis. It will be greatly embellished once we can fund the cartography for Indy and the rest of our cities.
Irregardless of how great a plan is for saving humanity, unless the mass consciousness is regularly bombarded with its virtue, it will not produce results. That is why, I have used three chapters to show the critical importance of a Public Relations firm. What I am proposing in this book will require a radical change in thinking. And yet if we have been able to use PR firms to sell the virtue of killing innocent human beings in the name of war on another country, we can use a PR firm to declare war on the very ways that we are killing ourselves and our planet. In the same way, PR Firms built Apple Computer and thereby the computer industry that has reshaped the world,
a consistent, hard hitting Public Relations campaign
will return the bicycle to its topmost position in society.