It might sound far-fetched, but not to Krieg, who wheels around Indy in a yellow bicycle that resembles a soap box derby car.
His teammate for building the trail is Ray Irvin, who once had visions of bike trails all over Marion County. About half of those dreams have come true.
For a sober perspective on this coast-to-coast vision, I turned to former Mayor Steve Goldsmith. A fiscal conservative and former prosecutor, he’s not easily swayed by expansive dreams. Yet as mayor, he turned Irvin loose in city government to start building the city’s trails in the early 1990s. Goldsmith had doubts but saw potential for neighborliness with the trail idea.
“I had some anxiety about some outrageously bad crime that could ruin the whole thing,” Goldsmith said. Yet that never happened.
The trails, especially the Monon, have expanded the city’s park system by many miles, leading to efforts to have a statewide system of bike trails.
“It’s amazing how a trail segment can actually connect people and bring them together as a community and make them more neighborly,” Goldsmith said.
Goldsmith adds that a national system of interconnecting trails is achievable, now that so many cities and states have trail systems.
Martin Krieg thinks Indianapolis is the right spot to promote the idea, calling us the “Greenway Capital of America.” He waxes eloquent about how Indy 500 founder Carl Fisher promoted the old Lincoln highway as a way to drive a car cross country, more than 100 years ago. Krieg fell in love with the city’s cultural trails on a ride last summer. If a national interstate system could be built in the 1960s and 1970s, a cross-country bike trail shouldn’t be out of the question.
Pulliam is associate editor of The Star. Follow him on twitter at RBPulliam@twitter.com. Email him at Russell.Pulliam@indystar.com.
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