Why NBG when we need better city cycling?

Similar to the psychology employed in the movie "Field of Dreams" where the mantra, 'if you build it
they will come' turned a baseball field built in the middle of a corn field into a vibrant gathering
place that attracted fun and visitors from miles around, this is what we foresee for the
transnational network of roads we call the National Bicycle Greenway. Once we've connected the edges
of the cities throughout America with those safe bikeable roads and paths that we here at the NBG
foresee, people within them will pressure their local governments to build infrastructure that
accesses the bicycle heaven calling to them from the outlying areas.

What's more is that instead of driving their cars and bikes to these bicycle wonderlands, because
they will not, by design, be car or parking friendly, there will be a push to replicate them closer
to home as they become the standard by which those roads and paths of the future will all be built.

We have an example of this here in California. And yet because the attraction was built around an
agency of environmental depredation, the car, and not the earth friendly tool that the bicycle is,
the Filed of Dreams that could have resulted became instead the Field of Destruction. Years ago when
the "visionaries" in our Dept of Transportation built Hwy 5, it was initially in the middle of
nowhere. But little by little as roads reached out to it, like tentacles in the brain, it became
less and less remote. Soon whole cities sprung up around this freeway as well as all of the
infrastructure that services its long distance cars and trucks and RV's, etc. And what has been the
result? California suffers from the overcrowding and gridlock that car centered development can't
help but engender.

With this in mind, the question remains, do we cover even more of America with car roads in what
remains of its outlying areas or do we exercise some vision and rebuild this nation by placing the
bicycle at its center and work backwards from there? With a National Bicycle Greenway in place, we
can be positioned to redesign the cities that will spring up around it with bicycle transport at its
epicenter.

You see, if we don't ask for our bicycle interstate network now, it just may be too late. For
everyone......

M A R T I N K R I E G : "Awake Again" Author Bent Since '83, Car Free Since '89, Attacking with
Love Coma, Paralysis, Clinical Death Survivor '79 & '86 TransAm Vet - Invites you to:
http://www.BikeRoute.com/SCNBGFest N A T I O N A L B I C Y C L E G R E E N W A Y

 

Star Valley, all 45 miles of it, here in western Wyoming seems to be rider friendly most of the time
and has W-I-D-E shoulders for pedaling on. I came here with upright and a '61 Corvair in '93 till I
switched [in '02] to a '92 Plymouth Voyager for foul weather traveling and a BikeE CT for fair
weather pedaling.

Had a 2 foot long, single axle stakeside trailer I pulled behind the upwrong for shopping and
errands. Gave it away with upwrong - dumb me - as now I need to buy a replacement to pull behind
the BikeE.

Back to the implement catalogs.

 

Dean Arthur wrote:
>
> Star Valley, all 45 miles of it, here in western Wyoming seems to be rider friendly most of the
> time and has W-I-D-E shoulders for pedaling on....

Do the shoulder have "rumble strips"? IIRC, Wyoming was one on the states that was considering
implementing their use on most state roads.

Tom Sherman - Planet Earth