The Indianapolis Cultural Trail is the secret sauce needed to connect the nation on a national level with Greenways. It has completely transformed the city of Indianapolis and has had a ripple effect all throughout the region. On the Cultural Trail itself, property values have skyrocketed and the businesses that service its users are flourishing. Not only has it also engendered a building boom along its right of way, it has benefitted many cutting-edge large employers (Anthem, Sales Force, Cummins, Eli Lilly, Rolls Royce, NCAA, Angie’s List) who use it to attract and keep the best talent.
The retail establishments along its way have also embraced it. And because this is the case, they and their clientele know to be more mindful of the needs of ICT users, and by extension, bicyclists in general. It is this thinking that they often bring into the communities where they live. And we often hear about the work of town fathers and mothers in other smaller population centers in the region who want to be connected to the greenways that feed the Cultural Trail.
In a city that once was drunk with speeding automobiles as symbolized by its world famous Indy 500 Motor Speedway, the ICT has spawned the creation of well over a dozen bike groups made up of people in their 20s and 30’s who meet regularly to ride on it. This gives the youth in this city role models they can look up to. Instead of turning to cars when they become old enough to drive, they see that there is another way to be a part of the in crowd.
Fourteen blocks wide and eighteen blocks long on just its main grid, the Indianapolis Cultural Trail is a functioning Greenway locals use every day to do their lives. On it there is a university, football stadium, basketball arena, the main library, a plethora of parks, as well as museums, concert halls, giant murals, health clubs, grocery stores, book shops, restaurants, coffee shops, breweries, a theatre complex/dance venue, the historic, very active Union railroad station, the world class Indy Canal paradise, even a popular comedy club. For visitors who come from afar there is a healthy selection of lodging purveyors.
Where there are retail businesses, shoppers on foot are separated from cyclists by beautiful landscaping and gardens. This as the entire greenway is intermixed with historical churches and other buildings, as well as handsome placards with interpretive signage delineating the long ago events that occurred where these markers can be found.
Even the greenway surface itself has the cyclist in mind. A signature red brick, its smooth surface is tapered back down to the road level where it meets intersections. As such, there is no bumping or jarring when it meets the traffic lights that favor the cyclist. This as rental bikes can be seen ridden or in their stalls all throughout the Cultural Trail.
People come from all over the world to experience the 8 soon to be 10 miles of this amazing piece of bicycle infrastructure. It is unlike any greenway anywhere on the globe as it plants the seed for the greater peace and prosperity that can result when a town or city shifts its focus from a car-centric one to a bike-centric one. As a brightly glowing Downtown Greenway with no equal, this, now is the seedling mile(s) that I am proud to be a part of. It is the trophy we can now genuinely hold up as an example of what our National Bicycle Greenway can become.
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