NBG 7-Year Plan (draft)

Our 7-year plan consists of three stages:

Overview

2016-2018

The first three years will be made up of creating Virtual Tours (Reno, NV example) to establish our 20 NBG Anchor Cities as the dots that connect bicycle travel between San Francisco and Washington DC. The research and travel required will be underwritten by  the crowdfunding campaign we plan to launch in March. To prepare the video and other content needed to support the March 2016 campaign that needs to raise $26,000, we are now running a GoFundMe fund raising drive for two of Krieg’s books one of which he has had written since 1995. In the second year of this campaign (talked about in more detail below), we will begin monetizing our efforts with a sales professional.  Concurrently, we will be encouraging cycle tourists to ride all or parts of our coast to coast route.

Since Krieg completed the manuscript for, “How to Move Mountains with Love and How Love Can Revitalize You, Our Communities, Nation and the World with the National Bicycle Greenway” before 2016 began and it is now being edited (help offset this expense), he has already begun work on his new book. He plans to  complete “The National Bicycle Greenway Book” (NBB) before 2017. NBB is a compendium of his several decades worth of selected NBG writings as well as present developments and what is planned for the National Bicycle Greenway. Besides NBB being a fund raiser, it will also serve as an awareness invoking tool. As such, the financial sponsors who help to get it written in our NBB GoFundMe campaign will be noted in NBB alongside those cyclists who ride all or part of our San Francisco to Washington, DC route (cycle tourists wanted NOW!).

Also in 2017 we plan to bring on a part-time Mayors’ Ride coordinator so we can  expand our Mayors’ Ride campaign to its original coast to coast format.

2019-2020

At Level Two we will seek grant money to then build NBG offices in our NBG Anchor cities and will monetize them with the professionals we bring in to staff Virtual Tour sales positions at them. Here in this time frame we will also seek funding for the NBG Hubs first talked about in “How America Can Bike and Grow Rich, the National Bicycle Greenway in Action”  (HBGR) and more specifically in Krieg’s new book noted above.

2021-2022

At Level Three of this plan, we will be calling for funds both from sales and grants to reverse engineer our Anchor cities with protected bike lanes, Neighborhood Greenways, traffic calming devices and the infrastructure specific needs that will all be required to upgrade the roads and paths we have identified. This will have the effect of formalizing and making permanent each Anchor City’s National Bicycle Greenway alignment.

2023 – on

Once we have established the 20 NBG Anchor Cities as the dots that hold coast-to-coast bike travel together, we will work with the public sector to redesign the roads and paths that connect them to one another. It is here where there is open space, that we foresee more Car-Free arterials, as well as park-like settings that families can use for vacation fun per what we have long foreseen in our original Vision Statement that dates back to 1988.

Rationale & Methodology

Driven by the fact that we know a healthier planet and healthier people cannot help but be the result, we will be using a lot of the same methodology the Lincoln Hwy (in 1912, this was America’s first coast-to-coast car road) people used to make our transamerica bike connection safe, enjoyable and real.

Learning from the some of the mistakes they made (detailed in this report), we will market our vision strategically with the campaigns more fully described below. Unlike the Lincoln people, instead of expending a lot of resources and energy trying to sell the fledgling car industry into their scheme, they were never able to land their biggest mark, Henry Ford, we will rely on the power of the people found in crowdfunding* to get our route known about as well as used on its way toward its becoming the principal National Bicycle Greenway arterial. In the footnote below, you can see other reasons why we know we are in a far better position to make our vision real than the Lincoln people who started but never fully actualized their dream. **

Campaign One

Instead of the national parks and forests the US Govt., as a way to encourage motor travel in the early 1900’s, tried to bring people to with its Office for Public Roads, we will celebrate our 20 NBG Anchor Cities as a way to encourage bicycle travel on our right of way. To make the population centers we have chosen attractive biking destinations, our plan is to celebrate them from the cyclist’s perspective. Toward that end, we will be showcasing our NBG Anchor Cities with Virtual Tours, on line bike routes that connect cyclists to all the places to eat, play, shop, sightsee and recreate in them.

In 2017, once we have seeded half of our coast-to-coast route with Virtual Tours, we will recruit and groom a commissions only, professional marketer who will garner the support of those businesses I will have identified – while I am actually on the road. In real time, then, this person  will be following up on the leads I generate daily from the cyclists actually out on the streets. Besides showing the viability of this income stream, until this position grows into one or more for each NBG Anchor City, this person will be helping these businesses capture some of the bicycle traffic the NBG will have brought about. They will have done this by helping them get icon and listing presences on our maps.

Besides supporting cyclists, as the numbers of these merchants grow, they will help move our vision along by drawing attention to our route and our dream for it. Not only will they market themselves to their present and potential customers as their being a green part of our program, they will also exert a subtle pressure on their local governments to keep our right of way safe and well functioning. This is how their efforts will also make their businesses attractive to out of town cyclists. Taken as a whole, their work will also have the effect of making the cities they do business from look both familiar and welcome to bike riders from all over America.

In order to do the kind of hands on research talked about here, ordinarily  the biggest expense would be for lodging. This is not reflected in the P&L  below because my efforts will be based out of one hotel sponsor in each city. And as such, in exchange for this privilege, they will have been made the anchor lodging purveyor for their population center.

What they will get in exchange is an exclusive presence for their place of business on our national map on the main page at BikeRoute.com. As well they will get  the only display advertising position that appears on their NBG Anchor cities pages, the footer ad position. And they will get a full page ad in NBB opposite the Anchor City biking report card for their city.

The biggest incentive for them to participate in such a way is the Virtual Tour that will result. With it all of the bike routes we devise will connect to their hotel. Here all these businesses will become community that can also offer discounts for customers who patronize one another.

Campaign Two

By my getting our route  known about and ridden as we also celebrate, our 20 NBG Anchor Cities, the buzz our efforts generate will get us to the next level of making the National Bicycle Greenway real. As the vision we have long held for a dedicated bicycle greenway evolving from the roads and paths we have selected grows into the popular consciousness, a ground swell of new resources and talent will make itself available to us. 

As such, we feel our work up to this point will have made the National Bicycle Greenway a part of the national dialogue. And once it is accepted as America’s principal coast-to-coast bicycle travel corridor, our being known about in this way will give us the authority we will need at this next level.

At the end of our first 3-year campaign, we will launch another crowd funding drive. At this level we will be seeking funds to get the administration, people and a Sacramento, Davis or San Francisco main hub office built that will attract lobbyists and top salespeople for the NBG business plan I have been working on and off on since 2007. Complete with the NBG Hubs talked about in  HBGR, what I have worked up will compound the drawing power of our NBG Biking Cities. 

Once this campaign is complete, as I’ve indicated above, not only will the next level of fundraising bring us a revenue generating engine that will make our NBG  hubs possible with professional salespeople, but it will also help us underwrite:

– A full time staffer for the NBG Anchor Cities program we will monetize
– A Graphic Artist  and Google API cartographer for our SF to DC main map at BikeRoute.com
– A Coordinator for the Mayors’ Ride program we will also monetize at level 3 that has been running since 2002.

Campaign Three

In fully fleshing out and making permanent the NBG alignments in our Anchor Cities, we will defer to staff that will have come aboard at  Level Two to formulate the procedure that will enable us to work with the public sector to make the National Bicycle Greenway real.  By this time, we also hope to have developed strong revenue stream from our Virtual Tour, NBG Anchor City and Mayors’ Ride programs.

Campaign One P&L

Revenue

Campaign One P&L

Revenue
26000 Crowdfunding 2016
36200 Crowdfunding 2017
36200 Crowdfunding 2018
98400 Total 3 year revenue

Expense
Off the road Per Month (for 6 mos)
1800 Living expenses, rent, food, misc
100 Public Transit w/Clipper Card
1900 Total/mo
11400 Year Total Off Road expense
On the road Per Month (for 6 mos)
3000 per diem (100/day)
500 inter city truck transfer
100 shuttles
200 Web Design Icon placement
3800 Total/mo
2000 Trade Shows: Recumbent Cycle Con, Interbike
24800 Year Total On Road expense
1200 Macbook Air Computer (year one only)
37400 Total Expense/year

99600 THREE YEAR CAMPAIGN (year one off-road paid by Krieg)

Note: The sales professional we plan to bring on in 2017 will be commission only

Schedule

In order to build our Virtual Tours, I will need to spend 10-14 days in each of our cities. During this time, I will be traveling on the world’s fastest production bicycle, a recumbent that that Lightning  Cycle Dynamics is sponsoring for this effort. A machine that folds to fit inside of a  suitcase, the Lightning  P-38 has set speed records all over the  USA and the world.

On it, I will  be actually riding the roads and paths locals and the crowd-sourced data Google Maps suggest. As well, I will be getting to know the  sights and things for a cyclist to do and see. I will be getting to know the local merchants as I also develop leads for sales crew follow up.

Our proposed schedule is HERE

* Crowdfunding – what is it?

The answer to this question can be found in the Internet based crowd-source revolution that is sweeping America. Led by companies such as Kickstarter, Indiegogo and RocketHub, etc, since 2009 they have underwritten a plethora of exciting new products and services! Also known a crowdfunding, this industry raised over $16 billion in 2014 and is expected to grow to 34 billion in 2015.

** Then and Now, why we can actualize NBG More expeditiously

Since we have so many more tools at hand since the early days of the Lincoln, the odds of our making the car-free heaven of our National Bicycle Greenway real are better than what the early Lincoln people were stacked up against in the early 1900s. Then cars were thought of as toys for the rich. Forget cellphones, then word traveled from one coast to the other by telegraph as the first coast-to-coast long-distance telephone call didn t take place until 1915. Radio was still being developed. And television was an unknown.

Here now as we march through  the next millennium with a mature Internet, the implements all of us have at our disposal for spreading the news increase with almost daily regularity. No longer, for example, is cartography an almost secret science requiring a lot of resources and special licenses, people all over the world are making maps on line  for their own use on a daily basis. Unlike back at the turn of the previous century when we barely knew what was going on in the next city or town, we now know what is going on in cities as many as 12 times zones away. We know their  weather, we know their news and with a few mouse clicks we can know the condition of the very roads they travel on.

*** Office of Public Roads (OPR) 

In terms of a coast-to-coast bikeway that will also be romanticized and become the standard by which all the countless others that follow will be judged, we can usher its early beginnings into form as, I am suggesting,.by modifying the approach the US Government took at the turn of the last Century. In 1905 they formed the Office of Public Roads (OPR)  to design and build roads to America s National Parks and National Forests.  When the OPR graded and covered the dirt access that already existed  to these locations with gravel, stone, sand-clay, brick, shells or oil, they  gave the early car travelers of the day a reward for driving longer distances in their automobiles

Background

When using the data they had accumulated, Carl Fisher and Henry Joy formed the lincoln Hwy Assn to support a red line on a map of the United States that connected New York City with San Francisco, and called it the Lincoln Highway, it was described by many as no more than ruts in the grass or a red line on a map connecting all the worst mudholes in the country. Even in their wildest imaginings, there was no way these two men could have known the consequences of their action. Hardly could they have foreseen all the other roads it would spawn, all the automobiles it would engender, the magnitude of the government oversight that would be required to keep it going, the amount of asphalt it would lay, concrete it would pour, cities it would give rise to, and, in the end, all the environmental depredation it would bring about. 

Now that our 16 years of research have finally given us the red line at BikeRoute.com that connects San Francisco with the Nation’s capitol that we are calling the National Bicycle Greenway, our work will begin in the cities where most people live, work and play. As for  the connections between population centers we feel those will be easier to develop after  the NBG first becomes successful in the towns and cities along our way. In fact, the surge in cycling that will result from improved biking infrastructure will amplify the voice that calls for human powered inter-city connectivity .

Since we have so many more tools at hand since the early days of the Lincoln, the odds of our making the car-free heaven of our National Bicycle Greenway real are better than what the early Lincoln people were stacked up against in the early 1900s. Then cars were thought of as toys for the rich. Forget cellphones, then word traveled from one coast to the other by telegraph as the first coast-to-coast long-distance telephone call didn’t take place until 1915. Radio was still being developed. And television was an unknown.

Here now as we march through  the third millennium with a mature Internet, the implements all of us have at our disposal for spreading the news increase with almost daily regularity. No longer, for example, is cartography an almost secret science requiring a lot of resources and special licenses, people all over the world are making maps on line  for their own use on a daily basis. Unlike back at the turn of the previous century when we barely knew what was going on in the next city or town, we now know what is going on in cities as many as 12 times zones away. We know their  weather, we know their news and with a few mouse clicks we can know the condition of the very roads they travel on.

The man who pushed for the Lincoln Highway was Carl Fisher. He was made famous by fomenting the building of the Indianapolis 500 Motor Speedway. In getting the Lincoln begun he was propped up by the fledgling automobile industry. His dream inspired poetry, even sermons by preachers.

Here now as we reverse engineer much of the world his actions brought about, it will be two and three wheeled human propulsion that will capture the imagination of the future ahead of us!! Full steam ahead for the National Bicycle Greenway!!