Mile Marker Placement Draft

Until we leaned that USBR 35 will get you to the shores of Lake Michigan but still 66 miles east of Chicago, and before Google entered the room with Slow Maps in  April 2021, this was how we were going to move forward. For the present, it is in a holding pattern.

Per the numbers we have worked up on our spreadsheets, we will pay landscape designers at 40% of mile marker logo sales. At one marker every ten miles, advertising on our first 18 logo posts between Indianapolis and Chicago will sell for on average of $___ each. When Greenway construction is complete in the two-block area (see below) around each marker, logo post advertising sales will double to $___ with yearly $___ increases. To get this ball rolling, Mr Greenway, Ray Irvin, will mobilize Ray Irvin Associates at ___/yr for three years to get the existing USBR 35 route from Indianapolis to Chicago marked.

They will provide us with mock-ups we can use to sell the mile-marker placements  they propose to investors. We look forward to being able to circulate a document that includes handsome graphic images for what these posts can look like as well as renderings that reflect the enhancements and upgrades that can associate with the areas around them. More specifically, we will allow for a 1/2 mile variance for each logo marker placement (between 9-1/2 and 10-1/2 miles apart). And ask that these proposals include possibilities for the linear 1/10 of a mile (roughly equal one city block) on either side of them.

Far more than getting posts into the ground, Ray’s group will be offering enhancements and beautifications  for the two block areas around them. By enticing  the people this will affect with the possibilities they suggest, once the posts are in, the locals will help us to get the development of these sections approved as well as underwritten. On a national level, besides improving the cycling in marker areas, these propositions can include,

In some of the more remote stretches
– Bicycle rest areas, complete with drinking fountains and restrooms
– Micro, self touring museums that display information and history about the surrounding area

At the edges of cities,
– Huts for concessionaires who supply food and drink, bike rentals and bike repair
– Flower and rose gardens
– Stalls for use by artists and flea marketers
– Small parks, with trees for shade, hammocks and slack lines, etc
– Small amphitheaters for low key music performances and speakers, etc

In residential areas –
– Protected bike lanes
– Tree planting
– Playgrounds
– Bicycle boulevards

Near strip malls
– Traffic calming measures
– Traffic circles
– Tree planting
– New paint

In downtowns
– Water walls
– Kiosks
– Gardens
– Planters
– Parklets

Through community meetings that include local cycling representatives and other means, Ray’s group will learn the needs of each affected group of people. They will return from the drawing boards to then professionally and convincingly, present the options available for each two-block section as a way to show how these markers can benefit them. As an iterative process, similar to what they did for the magical Indianapolis riverfront, design contests can even be held.

As we work to address their needs, they will see the bigger picture of the National Bicycle Greenway that these mile markers will be a part of. This is how we will get these folks, and all of the others along our route to embrace our vision of connectivity, economic development, and health and fitness. Their enthusiasm for being a part of a national quality of life movement will grow as our landscape designers show them how we will, in time, be connecting this alignment to destinations for recreation, historic sites, education, wildlife and adventure as well as internet and infrastructure possibilities.

Along the way, in order to get our markers placed, our design teams will have identified all the stakeholders and researched all the necessary permits. In getting this effort begun, part of Ray’s job will also include setting up the marker and placement standards as well as other signage and logos, etc., used by all future landscape designers. They will also commission all the vendors for design and manufacture of the posts.

Getting markers in the ground is the first step. They will magnetize all the funding and resources needed to flesh out the 3,000+ marker sections our design teams will have proposed. Once complete, this will make our entire route, including the back-country areas, attractive to cyclists and non-cyclists from all over the nation and the world. And as it does, it will have the effect of bringing about an avalanche of green tourism in the general areas all around them.