NBG Newsletter Excerpt (a **draft**) – 

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By showing it as the transportation leader it long has been, from its once having had, by far, the largest interurban street car system in the world, to its train station being the first to bring all rail travel to one hub, to its being a stronghold for some of America’s very first bicycles and giving its many bicycle clubs (about 100) a prominent voice in road use policy (by 1890, there were over 105,000 people in Indianapolis), to its giving birth to the automobile industry, to its creating the first highway across America (the Lincoln Highway that stretched from New York to San Francisco), to it being the Sports Capital of America (physical activity is much encouraged here) as well as it being the Greenway Capital of the world (thank you Ray R Irvin and Indy Greenways) and now home to the first downtown Greenway on the planet, the Indianapolis Cultural Trail, the example it has set with the honor it gives to its cyclists, needs to be replicated from one coast to the other.

I have documented all of the preceding claims about Indianapolis in the book “How Indianapolis Built America and How it will Rebuild it with the National Bicycle Greenway” . If we are going to change America’s transportation habits as a way to heal the planet, Indianapolis must once again lead the way!

One of the reasons I pump so much energy into Indianapolis, is because I want it to be seen as the genuine leader it is and always has been. In reinvigorating/transforming the tired rust belt city that it used to be with Greenways, this is the example we need to celebrate on a national level.

Once established as the genuine Gateway to the West, since it is the Crossroads of America where half the nation is within an effortless car drive, its profile as an important must visit city will skyrocket. Soon large numbers of people will feel called to experience for themselves the history that abounds here (as one example, HERE is what can be seen from the downtown Cultural Trail). And when they do, they will be unable to help but enjoy the two wheel wonder that abounds in what is more and more becoming thought of as America’s top bike city. Toward that end, the argument history scholars helped me to make in proving that it was Indianapolis that built the West, and not St. Louis, will give added authority to Indy Greenways. On center stage, it will show the power greenways have to re-energize business centers as well as build community . 

In proving that St Louis is NOT the Gateway as it always has been off the beaten track, per this chapter, I pumped a lot of research into this determination. As such, what has resulted is an ironclad argument accepted by local and state historians, as well as local business leaders. Once this becomes an accepted notion beyond city and state confines, more and more people all over this Nation will pay attention to the leading edge/trendsetting direction that Indianapolis is moving in. For cyclists!!