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NBG2000
Route Planning
The Interactive Map
Building the Map
How Can You Help?
During the Summer of 2000, Cycle America/National Bicycle Greenway and the Alliance for
a Paving Moratorium will stage NBG2000, an epic bike ride across the United States.
Hundreds, if not thousands of cyclists are expected to join in this effort. The trek, led
by author and TransAmerica veteran cyclist Martin Krieg will call for a stop to any new
road building and establish the possibility of a National Bicycle Greenway as the main
topic of discussion at home, work or play, wherever people exchange with one another.
The ride is planned to begin from many points around the country in early summer, 2000,
and finish up in the middle of August in Washington, DC. The group of cyclists will scale
the Rocky Mountains, pass wheatfields and cornfields of the midwest, cross the Mighty
Mississippi, pedal through the industrial northeast, cross the Appalachians and conclude
in the Nation's Capital. En route, the group will pass through the link cities of Atlanta,
GA, Boise, ID, Boston, MA, Boulder, CO, Chicago, IL, Cincinnati, OH, Des Moines, IA,
Eugene, OR, Houston, TX, Indianapolis, IN, Lincoln, NE, Los Angeles, CA, Miami, FL,
Minneapolis, MN, New York City, NY, Pittsburgh, PA, Portland, OR, San Francisco, CA, Santa
Cruz, CA, Sacramento, CA, Seattle, WA.
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Over the next year, we must plan the route that connects the link cities to Washington,
DC. Twenty two major link cities have been selected, but the route will also pass through
hundreds of small towns and travel on scores of highways, byways and city streets.
Planning the route is an exercise in detail. We will select roads and paths to get
safely through population centers as well as from one urban center to another. We will
identify parks, campgrounds, gymnasiums, hotels and backyards that can serve as useful
accommodations for a small city of cyclists. We will collate data about the Quality of
Life purveyors in these areas. We will list bike shops, health food stores, health clubs,
hostels, bike clubs, spas, farmers markets, etc., along the route. We will coordinate with
cycling events and exploit media attention to publicize the goal of establishing the
Greenway.
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Route planning for the National Bicycle Greenway Trans-Am 2000 is a collaborative
effort of many volunteers across the country. To coordinate the efforts of our dedicated
volunteers, we want to develop an interactive NBG2000 route map using the World Wide Web.
Here's the vision of this interactive route map:
The NBG2000 map site integrates three types of information:
- Maps illustrating the route.
- Cue sheets for the ride.
- Information about people, places and events along the route.
The NBG2000 site features a clickable map of the United States showing the major link
cities and the highways connecting them. Clicking on the map zooms in to reveal greater
and greater detail until you see individual roads and city streets, highlighted to
indicate the selected route. You can travel along the route in either direction by
clicking at one side or the other of the map.
The map is supplemented by a cue sheet giving turn-by-turn instructions. Perhaps the
map and the cue sheet are shown simultaneously in different frames. A click on a line in
the cue sheet shows the corresponding intersection on the map, and clicking on the map
shows the corresponding line of the cue sheet. Lodging, sponsoring businesses and
locations of special events are indicated by flags sprinkled along the highlighted route.
Clicking on a flag reveals information about the item, perhaps displayed in a third frame.
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Building this interactive map site will require the cooperation of
- One or more online map purveyors.
- Local mappers to define the route.
- Other individuals and businesses to help with local tie-ins.
- Web author(s).
Ideally, the online map purveyors provide some of these things:
- Interactive map navigation.
- Highlighting of our route.
- Turn-by-turn cue sheets.
- Clickable location flags.
- Inline maps on our web page.
None of the online map sites we've seen provide all of these capabilities. Some have
interactive navigation, some don't. Some provide route highlighting, but mostly for routes
their software creates. Some allow us to show the maps on our web site and others only
allow us to link to their site because of copyright restrictions.
We're looking for online map purveyors who will collaborate with us to build the
NBG2000 interactive map. This will involve working with the particular capabilities of the
map purveyor. For example, if interactive map navigation is available, but not clickable
location flags we will have to link lodging, sponsors and events to the cue sheets. Or
interactive navigation is not available, but copyright restrictions are not a problem, we
can place location flags on the map ourselves and place hotspots on the maps ourselves.
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You can help in these ways:
- To help with route planning or local events, contact Kurt Kleinschmidt, olias@one.net .
- To help plan the DC Rally, contact Dan Petkunas, gca@utech.net.
- To help build the interactive map, contact John Strait, jstrait@acm.org.
- To inquire about sponsoring NBG2000 or to volunteer in other ways, contact Martin Krieg,
cycleam@bikeroute.com.
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