Visionary! Transcendent! Plan Proposes 1,300-Mile Bike Path To Follow Keystone XL Pipeline [View all]

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The debate over the Keystone XL pipeline has gotten pretty heated and Kinder Baumgardner has an idea to cool the emotions: a really long bike path. The creative director for the SWA Group, an Houston-based architectural firm that designed Google Inc.’s corporate campus, says building the lane along Keystone’s path through the country’s mid-section could turn what is now a source of rancor into a tourist attraction.

The firm sent a letter Oct. 17 pitching the plan to the State Department and TransCanada Corp. (TRP), the pipeline’s sponsor. Its illustrations show scenes of smiling bicyclists riding over buried pipe and by a farmer’s market, Native American teepees, cows, sunflower fields -- and a protester in a tree.

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In Texas, SWA is working to build bike paths underneath power lines owned by CenterPoint Energy Inc. (CNP) It already turned a polluted waterway into a scenic promenade called the Buffalo Bayou. Keystone, which would stretch over 1,300 miles if a southern leg from Cushing, Oklahoma, to the Gulf Coast is included, would be on a different scale. TransCanada has asked for permission to build the pipeline to connect the oil sands of Alberta with refineries along the gulf.

Critics of Keystone reacted with a certain amount of incredulity to the idea. “I think it’s ridiculous,” said Jane Kleeb, the executive director of Bold Nebraska, which opposes Keystone because it says it could pollute water and farm and ranch land in Nebraska. “Why would anyone who cares about the environment want to ride on top of a pipeline that ruins the environment? The person who developed this is so out of touch with reality.” “This seems like it should be in The Onion or something,” said Tiernan Sittenfeld, a lobbyist with the League of Conservation Voters, said in an e-mail. “Seriously, this can’t be for real.”

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http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-10-28/sunflowers-to-schwinns-proposed-for-keystone-pathway.html