In order to demonstrate that the National Bicycle Greenway is for all Americans, we long have needed to do this from a central location. This is why we have moved to Indianapolis, the Crossroads of America, the Greenway Capital of the Nation, the real Gateway to the West, and the world’s Transportation Birthplace, all of which  Martin Krieg has demonstrated in his book, “How Indianapolis Built America and How it will Rebuild it with the National Bicycle Greenway”.

How NBG Overview  

The actualization of the NBG will follow a two-prong approach. A membership campaign will be kicked off to get place markers installed on the first leg of our route from Indianapolis to Chicago. While at the same time, underpinning will be laid in place for construction in Indianapolis of the first of our 19 other NBG hubs. This is explained in this overview while the specifics are in the more detailed explanations that follow.

In 2013, after five bike rides across this Nation beginning in 1979 with Martin Krieg’s solo TransAm, along with other NBG route scouting research, we put the National Bicycle Greenway route from San Francisco to Washington, DC on the landing page of BikeRoute.com. We selected this route to get across America, because it is in alignment with where the preponderance of cyclists are – in the cities! This means most prospective users will not have to rely on plane, train or long automobile road trips to get to it. Over time, spurs feeding other population centers will make it accessible to more and more of the USA.

Between the two endpoints, and in the 18 other cities it travels through, our route now needs to be marked on the actual ground. This is what the Lincoln Highway, birthed in Indianapolis, did in 1928 when they placed concrete symbols on every mile of theirs, America’s first coast-to-coast car road.

To make this happen on our route, we will get a Request For Proposal out to landscape architects who will determine what it will cost for the design, manufacture and actual placement of the first 18 of these markers (one every ten miles). Our first leg will be the Indianapolis to Chicago link. If all goes according to our vision, it will use the USBR 35 corridor that has been adopted by Visit Indy, the Indianapolis Convention and Visitors Bureau.

According to the schedule below, the 11 markers for Indy  to Cincinnati will be next. They will be followed by the 60 needed for Cincinnati to Columbus and Pittsburgh. Since Pittsburgh to the nations capital is already built in the form of the Great Allegheny Passage/C&O Canal trail, we will then start getting the west marked. In our last mile marker campaign, with 226 markers, we will sign the route from Chicago to San Francisco.

For the 3,150 total markers needed along with security systems, the $5 million price-tag and installation schedule we have formulated can be found below.

The cost to connect Chicago with Indianapolis will be the target of our present effort. Using $280,000, as a very rough estimate (described below), we will begin an NBG membership campaign. We feel that with anywhere from 14,000 to 56,000 members, at as little as $5 apiece, we can raise the money needed to make this signage a reality.

Far more than helping cyclists stay on course, these mile markers hold the key for a wide array of probabilities and revenue streams as we will show you. Initially, salespeople will be employed to sell logos on the markers that will crop up every ten miles between Indianapolis and Chicago.

Armed with the authority of markers on the ground from one coast to the other, we will then work to turn this route into a national asset that will one day become Car Free. We foresee the use of our route by other nonprofits for fundraising efforts of their own. An on the ground National Bicycle Greenway will also greatly stimulate tourism from abroad as well as intranationally.

At the same time that we launch our membership and mile marker campaigns, we will mobilize the effort (site selection, RFPs, etc) required to build the first of our NBG Hubs in Indianapolis. In addition to serving as the main headquarters for the National Bicycle Greenway, in time NBG Hubs in each of our NBG Anchor cities will string our route together. In summary form, I will explain what  these centers are and the excitement they can bring to connect the coasts with the bikeway we envision.  A detailed explanation can be found HERE.

The NBG Indianapolis Hub will take the form of a repurposed warehouse. It will house the main headquarters of the NBG to include separate rooms for TransAm Register Licensure,  NBG Publishing, NBG Sales/Marketing, etc., as well as be big enough to provide office space for a handful of local environmentally aligned nonprofits. Its meeting hall will feature dances, talks, mixers, seminars, yoga symposiums, movie nights and bicycle swap meets, etc. It will be big enough to rent out to a plethora of different bike and community organizations for events of their own. It will house a community bike shop for the rehabilitation and sale of old bikes. There will be workshops that teach locals how to work on bikes along with certification classes.

The hubs will have a bike taxi operation as well as rental bikes, a bike library and museum. There will be a showroom featuring bikes for sale as well as a  recharge area and showers for long distance cyclists

With something people can feel and touch, an NBG Hub and mile markers on the ground,  there will be traction for all of the programs (and the jobs they will engender) we talk about below such as:

NBG TransAm Register Licensure
Online mapping cartography
Anchor City Biking Report Cards & monitoring
NBG Travel Courts
Greenway maintenance
Greenway infrastructure construction
Map monitoring (keeping what’s on ground current w/online)
Sales – (many positions per our revenue streams below)
NBG memberships, individual & corporate | NBG mile marker logo renewals | Display Ads on Maps – Biking Report Cards – TransAm rider blog – Mtn Mover Podcasts- NBG Anchor Cities – Biking Report Cards  — Corporate Sections – NBG Magazine Display Ads
Flagpost Map listings
Greenway route signage
Online Mapping Monetization
NBG Magazine Publishing
Google Ad placements on all NBG pgs
Ride blog editors (embellishing rider reports w/history, pictures, points of interest, etc)
Corporate Sections
TransAm Rider Blogs
TransAm Rider Hall of Fame
Route Rider certificates (like Camino de Santiago compostelas riders can use to TransAm spaced over several years)
Cross Country Rides by section
Mile Marker Administration
NBG Magazine