I thought this was exciting news, people for bikes have picked Indianapolis for their next phase of the Green Lane Project. The national organization have chosen 6 cities total for this phase of the project:
Atlanta, Georgia
Boston, Massachusetts
Denver, Colorado
Indianapolis, Indiana
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Seattle, Washington
These six cities were chosen from over one hundred possible candidate cities.
According to this Green Lane Project press release, The chosen cities will "receive financial, strategic and technical assistance to create low-stress streets and increase vitality in urban centers through the installation of protected bike lanes."
This project started in 2012 and has already successfully assisted 6 other cities across the nation:
Austin, Texas
Chicago, Illinois
Memphis, Tennessee
Portland, Oregon
San Francisco, California
Washington, DC
The Green Lane Project press release says this about the project accomplishments so far:
"the number of protected bike lanes on city streets nationwide has nearly doubled from 80 to 142 – with more than half of all growth coming from the Project’s original six focus cities. The founding cities will continue as mentors to the new class while continuing to build their bicycling networks with the momentum driven by the Project."
It sounds like this project will have a rolling snow ball effect with the earlier cities "mentoring' the newer cities. If this continues, I can imagine an eventual time where almost all the large cities across the nation would work together to have safer bike lanes. This sounds like an excellent project that could have an eventual snowball effect into the surrounding smaller towns and cities.
It would be nice to have some safer bike lanes throughout Indy. Currently I avoid it like the plague, since there's a lot of traffic on very narrow lanes, plus some very rough railroad crossings that look virtually impossible to cross by bike. Perhaps the RAIN ride will eventually go through Indy instead of around it, once this has been implemented. Although sending over 1,000 cyclist through downtown Indy may be a mistake, safe lanes or not.
Look at the people for bikes home page to learn more about their fantastic cause and then signup if you haven't already. Here is their browse by state page, once you made your selection, you can see the key stats for the individual state, including the number of people for bikes members, local shops, grants and protected bike lanes.
