Category: In the Media

Categories
Greenways History In the Media

Goodbye, Inner Circle Greenway. Hello, Joe Louis Greenway.

Joe Louis Greenway MapThe 26-mile greenway that wraps around the cities of Detroit, Hamtramck, and Highland Park has a new name.

Back in February 2017, Free Press columnist Rochelle Riley asked, “When Joe Louis Arena is gone, how do we honor Detroit legend?” Legend isn’t used lightly with Louis. He was so much more than a world champion boxer. From breaking color barriers to fighting fascism, Louis was an inspirational both inside and outside of the ring.

So when Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan proposed naming the Inner Circle Greenway in his honor, it also lifted the greenway. A conceptual asphalt trail around the city in 2008 was now being named after the city’s most impactful athlete. Riley’s followup column wrote, “Detroit cements honor for Joe Louis with a giant greenway around the city.”

Louis’s family approved of the naming. That shouldn’t be much of a surprise as his son is a bicyclist and is a board member for the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy.

“I am delighted that the (greenway) will be named after my father Joe Louis,” said Joe Louis Barrow, Jr. son of the famous boxer. “It is a fitting tribute to a person who had a positive impact on so many people.”

Mayor Duggan added, “It will unite neighborhoods from all corners of this city in a dedicated area for walking and jogging and biking.”

Before this announcement, we contacted retired city attorney Jim Edwards. Jim was an early champion of the trail and coined the original name. He was very supportive of the renaming.

One interesting coincidence with the original name was the this caricature of P.N. Jacobsen standing in an “inner circle”. Jacobsen led the creation of the Detroit Terminal Railroad — which makes up about 8 miles of the greenway — and was an active Detroit cyclist during the 1880s and 1890s.

He wrote an article called The Detroit Wheelmen for the Outing Magazine in 1891. It noted that a result of the city putting on asphalt on the streets, “Wheeling has attained a height of popularity in Detroit heretofore unknown.”

Of course this was years before Detroit was Motor City — and we’re not advocating relinquishing that title. We just suggest adding a new one.

Detroit, world heavyweight greenway champion.

More information on the Joe Louis Greenway

Categories
Complete Streets Greenways In the Media Newsletter

Coalition Updates – December 2015

Bike Trails & Cocktails Event

Welcome to December!

#GivingTuesday is nearly over, but there’s still an opportunity to make a tax-deductible contribution to the Coalition. By donating through the PayPal fund, service fees are waived and they’ll add an additional 1%.

We were recently featured in an NBC News article and video, Motor City to Bike City: Inside Detroit’s Bicycle Renaissance. It was a great opportunity to highlight all the work being done in Detroit and the impact it’s having in making the city more bike-friendly.

Digging Detroit also published a video, Rails-to-Tales: Detroit’s Inner CIrcle Greenway. It includes footage from the abandoned rail corridor as well as historic photos.

While much progress has been made on the Inner Circle Greenway recently, there has been some unfortunate news. Detroit’s $10.4 million federal TIGER grant was not selected. The TIGER program is hyper-competitive, so that’s not too much of a surprise. The Coalition is working with the city on alternative funding plans which may include another shot at TIGER.

We recently biked with Detroit’s Planning Director Maurice Cox and MDOT’s projects managers for the I-94 widening project. We rode along the I-94 corridor and discussed mostly negative impacts MDOT’s project will have on biking and walking. We’ve been highlighting these concerns for years now so having Maurice involved and being equally concerned is very welcomed. We can’t afford to lose pedestrian bridges and other key community connections across the freeways.

 

2016 Events
We are making plans for next year and expanding upon our successful Bike Trails & Cocktails event. Initial plans are to host these events quarterly. Some will include bike tours, guest speakers, and more.

Stay tuned as we expect to announce more details in the coming months.

​
Categories
History In the Media

Bike-Boom in Detroit:Räder aus Ruinen

spiegel_online_logo_460_64The Detroit Greenways Coalition just received a little web ink in Germany’s Spiegel Online. This snippet from the article was translated via Google:

The majority of the bikes from Shinola or Detroit bikes will of course not sold in Detroit, but in other areas of the USA. On poor state of the roads in the city or on the icy weather during the winter months, but that does not lie, says Todd Scott of the cyclist lobby “Detroit Greenways Coalition”. The city is developing into quite cyclist-friendly. “In 2006 there were in Detroit just eleven miles biking trails, today there are more than 200 miles,” says Schott. And with 7000 participants was the “Tour de Droit” the greatest cyclists ride in the state of Michigan.

While the number of car commuters had decreased by 20 percent, now almost 50 percent more people live to cycle to work than it was ten years ago. And organized by Jason Hall, founder of the bike show “Detroit Bike City” Slow Roll is made with up to 4,000 participants motley popular weekly bike ride across America; the computer manufacturer Apple processed the cool pedalo convoy even in a two-minute commercial.

It’s welcomed that the article acknowledges Detroit’s rich cycling history which helped enable its automotive industry.

With the boom for bikes starts for Detroit not a new chapter in the history of the city, but it is an ancient updated basically. “Bicycles have in this city a longer tradition than cars,” says Scott. Even Henry Ford introduced its first car four bicycle wheels and brought the engine power by bicycle chain to the wheels. The Dodge Brothers earned – like the brothers Opel in Germany or the Peugeot family in France – the money for future car production with the profits from bicycle.

Scott says it’s traffic Senator Horatio Earle earlier due attention to bicycle that the first roads were concreted in Detroit. And even the first motor show in the birthplace of the industrial automobile production was organized by a bicycle dealer. “His ascension and his case like Detroit car thanks,” recently wrote the business magazine “Fortune” and continued: “.. The history of the city, however, is not resting on four, but on two wheels And perhaps her future”