USA Pro Cycling Challenge will create traffic road blocks
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- Created on Tuesday, 09 August 2011 13:32
- Written by USA Pro-Cycling Challenge
By NANCY LOFHOLM, THE DENVER POST
When the world's best cyclists spin and sprint over Colorado's highways in the USA Pro Cycling Challenge in two weeks, drivers will face a challenge of a different sort — a complicated rolling wave of delays and hours-long roadblocks.
The race, a more than 500-mile, seven-day event that is being billed as the largest spectator affair in Colorado's history, is expected to bring out as many as a million fans Aug 22-28. They will be watching the 136 professional riders on stages that loop and hopscotch from Colorado Springs across the mountains of the Western Slope and the Continental Divide to a finish in downtown Denver.
Planned road closures on the route
The combination of fans trying to follow the race and drivers just trying to get from point A to point B for work or fun adds up to what Colorado Department of Transportation spokeswoman Ashley Mohr calls "definitely a doozy."
"This is requiring a whole lot of coordination with a whole lot of agencies," she said.
The road-clogging possibilities jumped with the increased interest in the race. Tour de France-style hordes of bicycle-chasing fans are expected to be screaming for their favorite riders at the top of Independence Pass. Plenty more likely will be camping in the right-of-way (a one-time bending of CDOT highway rules) along U.S. 40 outside Steamboat Springs or in the highway-side ditches by Lookout Mountain as they wait for a glimpse of the peloton.
Not to worry, Colorado State Patrol spokesman Nathaniel Reid said.
"We've planned and planned and overplanned," Reid said. "We've thought of everything that can go wrong."
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