Beacon Road Race CANCELLED

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gmac
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Beacon Road Race CANCELLED

Post by gmac » 15 Aug 2015 14:41

Dear All

Unfortunately tomorrow's Red Kite Road Race has had to be cancelled due to road works on the course. Sorry for any inconvenience.
Regards
Gary Mackintosh

martin mc
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Post by martin mc » 15 Aug 2015 14:46

Rotten luck Gary, I rode the course on monday & all was clear.

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Philip Whiteman
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Post by Philip Whiteman » 15 Aug 2015 15:44

I hope Gary likes hot-dogs.

More seriously though, aside from the frustration for participants, more sympathies lie with Gary and the team. An enormous amount of preparatory work is required for organising a race. Only yesterday I was reading the organiser's guidance published by BC and it looked horrific.

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CakeStop
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Post by CakeStop » 15 Aug 2015 16:23

Bad luck Gary - let me know how much you end up out of pocket.
Eat cake before you're hungry

Dave Cox
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Post by Dave Cox » 15 Aug 2015 17:48

Really sad after all the work you have put in.

John D
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Re: Beacon Road Race CANCELLED

Post by John D » 15 Aug 2015 23:36

gmac wrote:Dear All

Unfortunately tomorrow's Red Kite Road Race has had to be cancelled due to road works on the course. Sorry for any inconvenience.
Regards
Gary Mackintosh
Gary, definately not you that should be the one apologising at all, gutted (and not just for the hot dogs) for the organisers and proposed participants....assume that these were unplanned works?

Out of interest, I was trying to find the proposed route without success and not sure if this was a circuit based race or just a single route? Is there a link anywhere?

JD

laurence_cooley
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Post by laurence_cooley » 16 Aug 2015 09:25

John, the circuit was to be the same as for this race: http://www.strava.com/activities/45094616. It's quite a popular circuit for local clubs' road races (all BC road races at this level are held on road circuits, rather than being point-to-point). As far as I know, the roadworks were emergency ones that appeared yesterday. :(

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petemarshall
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Post by petemarshall » 16 Aug 2015 14:53

I bet no one was working on the "emergency" today and the world would not have ended if they had delayed until Monday . Unfortunately the lack of concern for our sport is displayed once again.

John
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Post by John » 17 Aug 2015 13:44

petemarshall wrote:I bet no one was working on the "emergency" today and the world would not have ended if they had delayed until Monday . Unfortunately the lack of concern for our sport is displayed once again.
My guess is that the individuals concerned with this decision were unaware of the event.

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petemarshall
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Post by petemarshall » 17 Aug 2015 14:41

Which is my point John. The Highway authority (in this case the local authorities) are aware of the race. Anyone doing emergency work on the highways has to inform the highway authority. The local authority doesn't bother telling either the race organiser or the people in charge of the road works because the cycle race is an irrelevance to them.
The value that is placed on cycling generally in this country is very low, racing is even lower. Keeping cars and lorries moving is what matters.
I would estimate 95% of the population would rank keeping cars and lorries moving around at more importance than cycle racing ( I'm in the 5% on this )

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Philip Whiteman
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Post by Philip Whiteman » 18 Aug 2015 09:32

Worcestershire County Council would not have known about the decision to conduct a road race on the highway. The notification for the conduct of cycle races or timed trials on the public highway fall under the auspices of the Cycle Racing on The Highways Regulations 1960, which are currently proposed for revision. The 1960 regulations place a duty on event organisers to obtain permission from the Police, who will determine permission and whether the race or time trial. The Police will determine usually on the basis of road safety or conflicts with other identified events.

The only instance where the highways authority becomes involved is where an event is likely to exceed 3,000 people and/or the implementation of a traffic order. In this instance, an application has to be made by the organiser to the Safety Advisory Group for the area. On this basis and in this instance, it is reasonable to assume that Worcestershire County Council would not have been aware of our race. If they had, they may have merely advised the Beacon that our race could not take place due to scheduled road works.

In respect to road works, the utility or local authority has to receive a permit for the partial or full closure of the carriageway except where emergencies apply. The application has to be made in accordance with Traffic Management Act 2004 s278. For utilities, any over-run will result in fines for exceeding the duration of the permit. Worcestershire as the highways authority would also apply for a permit to itself!

In short, it is doubtful that Worcestershire County Council as the highways authority would have been aware of the road race planned by the Beacon, unlike the Police. It leaves cycle events in a type of 'no-man's land' when it comes of partial or full road closures.
Last edited by Philip Whiteman on 18 Aug 2015 10:39, edited 9 times in total.

John D
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Post by John D » 18 Aug 2015 09:43

laurence_cooley wrote:John, the circuit was to be the same as for this race: http://www.strava.com/activities/45094616. It's quite a popular circuit for local clubs' road races (all BC road races at this level are held on road circuits, rather than being point-to-point). As far as I know, the roadworks were emergency ones that appeared yesterday. :(

Laurence, much appreciated

cheers

JD

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