When I was posting about my recent trip to Greece, some thoughts popped up on biking tourism and how it could be a good thing for Raleigh (see my other post where we rode while on a trip to Greece).
Given that biking can be a viable tourist activity on a resort, I would like to see an urban greenway that would connect major parts of downtown Raleigh with separated cycle track. Raleigh does have bike lanes, however they are often blocked by police, buses, typical drivers, or building construction. A separated cycle track could help with tourism if it manages to connect visitors to varying parts of downtown. It could also be a drive for local businesses. An example would be from John Winters Park, which provides greenway access, to Smoky Hollow; Or it could be entirely down Hillsborough St. towards the college (which then connects to the greenway/NCMA). I had a coworker fly in to visit our office here. I ended up taking them on one of the Crank Arm rides. They loved it (granted I let them use my ebike). It’s something I think that could help Raleigh tourism wise. I already ride downtown for the Crank Arm rides which seems to do a lot for Crank Arm alone (along with the food truck that is there). A lot of people have mentioned they feel safe riding in a group. Imagine what it would be like if people felt safe riding without the need for a huge group.
When I’ve visited other cities, I’ve tended to take time to ride as a tourist. I rode around Central Park while riding in NYC. What strikes me about this trip is that this was back in 2017 before I was back into biking. I had ridden with my wife and her parents. Of course Central Park was a very safe place to ride around. It was about 6 miles around the park.
On a separate trip, I chose to visit Greenville, SC instead of Charlotte since Greenville appeared to be a better city at the time to do some biking (Click here for my post about Greenville, SC). In Washington DC, we spent some time biking around the National Mall and the Wharf (Click here for that post).
Raleigh has some good greenway paths, but it seems that downtown tends to really be lacking as far as a greenway system (or something better than a blocked bike lane). If we could get an urban greenway system downtown, I think this would be a draw for tourism. These were just some thoughts that popped up when I was posting about my Greece trip.