Virtual Tour

The city of Indianapolis has created the first and only Downtown Grenway system in North America. It is why we moved the National Bicycle Greenway from the Greater San Francisco Bay Area to the Circle City. Called the Indianapolis Cultural Trail (ICT), it has shifted the rebirth of Indianapolis that the Indy Greenways network began in the 90’s to a whole new level. The ICT is bringing about a transformation in the businesses along its way as well as for all the great numbers of people who use it every day that has no precedent.

As it causes cash registers to hum and city tax coffers to sing with a not before known glee, its possibilities for Indianapolis as well as the Nation are limitless. In fact, a whole book can be written about the magic it regularly makes here, but for our purposes we will limit it to this publication’s intent, showing how Indianapolis built America for cars and how it will rebuild it with bicycling. As you read about the ICT in the chapter, you will quickly see why we need similar Downtown Greenways all across America. In particular, you will understand why they will serve as the glue that holds all 18 of our NBG Anchor cities between San Francisco and Washington, DC together.

Eight miles in length (soon to be ten!), the ICT connects a zoo, State Park, monolithic memorials, historic statues, football stadium, basketball arena, baseball park, main library, university, the 284-foot tall Soldiers and Sailors Monument of 1888, its renowned 1.5 mile Canal Walk, world class art and history museums, national calibre entertainment venues, the State Capitol, its busy Convention Center, the White River, and the first, in 1853, union train station hub in the world. On the ICT, the smooth surface of a handsome, red brick has replaced concrete sidewalks to pass ten or so feet away from the front doors of a myriad of eateries, hotels, drinking establishments, hair parlors, coffee, bike, pastry and thrift shops, fitness facilities, and etc. Along its way, racks filed with rental bikes abound. Add beautiful landscaping and tastefully designed interpretive signage that call out everything from Civil War battles to historical events that took place at the locations they herald and you will begin to imagine how your city, however large or small, can use a Downtown Greenway to celebrate its own unique character.

In selling itself to the world, Indianapolis could almost just rest on the laurels of just one of its stops, the Indy Canal Walk. Fed by the ICT and footsteps from the State Capitol that anchors its downtown is a man made canal that dates all the way back to 1836. Rebuilt beginning in the 1980’s to serve as a recreational haven, the Indy Canal offers a little bit of everything to most anyone.

One can sit on a bench or in a restaurant along the canal and just watch the world go by. Tastefully designed buildings and beautifully landscaped grounds line this peaceful waterway. On its wide sidewalks, couples, hand in hand are gently passed by 2, 3 and 4-person pedal cars, often with families in them, that slowly scurry about. In the water, gondolas, 4-person pedal boats and kayaks stream by the three fountains that send bursts of water high into the air. A novel break from the city all around it, the white noise of water not only streams from the fountains in the middle of the canal, there are even walls that border the sidewalk that are covered in liquid cascades.

 

During weekday summer afternoons, public concerts at two different venues are a weekly treat. During the weekends, a drum circle can often be heard as they play alongside acrobatic yoga, even capoeira practitioners. And as Canal Walk strollers revel in the wonder at hand, in and amongst the picnics spread out on lawns and hammocks that hang from the trees in one area of its northern end, a few zip lines can also be seen that support young people practicing their tight rope skills. And yet, the little slice of heaven that the Indy Canal Walk represents, is just one of the many highlights one can find on the ICT.

As a piece of bicycle infrastructure, the scale of the ICT boggles the mind. On specially groomed sidewalks, as business is being done several yards away, the way the curbs are cut and the lights are timed, etc, I feel like, as a cyclist, I am wanted here.

By encouraging bicycle trips in its downtown, local government here is helping locals and tourists alike to spend money in the places of business in its central core. And as bike riders help downtown Indianapolis thrive, we also help cyclists on all the roads in somewhat near proximity. This is so, because the people who run the city also know they have to provide safe passage on the streets and paths that feed the city’s center.

Besides city planners working to make it easier for us to get to downtown with safer streets and paths, those in vehicles also want to help us get to where we can spend our money too. Because they often know someone who has employment because of us, a job related to the greenway, or others who have benefitted from our expenditures of cash, motorists seem to keep more of an eye out for us. More often than not, we get the teence of wiggle room we may need from them for clear passage when our paths cross.

Consciously or subconsciously, drivers here also tend to react this way, even if they don’t cycle themselves, because they often know someone who does. And as more of their neighbors and friends join us, those of us on two wheels are not seen as enemies to their transportation efforts but a part of their extended family of friends. It is with this realization that downtown Indianapolis cyclists are seen as an important part of the woodwork.

As on-line commerce pushes one brick and mortar business and industry after another to extinction, the only retail establishments that will survive will be those that offer people a place where we can socialize. Off the beaten path, enormous, ceiling covered, temperature controlled shopping malls, surrounded by a sea of parking, once served the purpose of bringing humans together. As they age and lose their novelty and as people tire of the car-centric lifestyles they require, Americans are returning to their downtown business districts. In removing traffic filled commutes from our personal living equations, those of us leaving the suburbs are giving birth to the new neighborhoods of America, its downtowns that are revitalizing everywhere.

There are many winners when the private automobile is not the ruler king of a city, especially its downtown. Not only do its neighbors get to know one another, but they are able to more readily share the world around them with people from places far and near and even from other countries. When it is safe to move about on your own two legs to take advantage of the fun offerings that can be had, many non-fuel driven forms of conveyance can be enjoyed.

Besides one’s own personal bike, like what we see here in Indianapolis, locals and tourists can also take their trips on rental bikes and 2, 3 and 4-person surreys, even rental grade recumbent pedal machines. As more and more smiling, wide-eyed people let these fun new ways of self propulsion move them about, downtown Indianapolis is starting to feel more like a village. A happy place where we can spend our money without feeling like we are in a noisy city filled with foul smelling cars, trucks and buses that we have to constantly be on the lookout for.

About the magic that prevails in downtown Indianapolis, Mr. Greenway, Ray Irvin, says, the ICT is a showcase of how the businesses of the future will all operate – car visits will not be encouraged, but human powered ones will. As the genuine prophet that Ray is, he says that to be successful in the not too distant future, your storefront will have to be on a people powered throughway – it will have to be bike friendly.

Do so, and property values will soar along your own Downtown Greenway. Here, for example, in Indianapolis, the inner core is becoming more and more like a college campus setting where more and more new office towers are being built so employers can give their employees place to eat and play when they are not on the clock. Locating in such fun circumstance also make it easier for them to recruit the best talent.

Turning your downtown into a bicycle playground has other ramifications for cyclists far and near to your city as well. As it turns your business center into a destination even for car drivers who just come for its peace and its quiet, it will spawn other pathways. Surrounding areas will all build people powered connections to it. Already the Indianapolis Cultural Trail is served by the Central Canal towpath, the White River Trail, the Pleasant Run Trail and the 25-mile long Monon Trail which will, in time reach Chicago.

This is how the National Bicycle Greenway will get built, how all 20 of our NBG Anchor cities will hold the San Francisco to Washington, DC connection together.

The downtown greenways in each of them will call to one another. In Indianapolis, while the Monon Trail will, in soon enough time, reach Chicago, our next NBG Anchor City on their way to San Francisco, Cincinnati is the next stop for those headed east to Washington DC. To access Cincinnati from Indy’s Downtown Greenway, the red brick ICT pathway on Washington St. will continue well past Alabama St. where it presently turns.

In doing so, the ICT will stay on what was once the National Road that Thomas Jefferson signed into law all the way back in 1806. As the National Road continues across Indiana to Cincinnati, Washington St, as it is known now will be retrofitted to meet the National Bicycle Greenway spec for those roads that carry its cyclists. Here a number of different measures will be deployed.

For example, traffic calming will be implemented with everything from bollards and protected bike lanes to one way streets. Tastefully designed signage will establish cyclists and other human powered users of this arterial as its preferred travelers. Other signage will celebrate the history of this right of way, the National Road, the first road to connect the Washington DC area to what was once the frontier west  of the White River in Indianapolis on its way to Vandalia, IL  63 miles short of the Mississippi River.