UCI road closures shouldn't impact campus; UR Downtown to close for the week

Starting on Saturday, the city of Richmond will be hosting the 2015 UCI Road World Championships, with various events and bike races throughout the city over the span of the week.

Although the race does not reach the University of Richmond campus until it hosts the start of the Men’s Elite Road Race on Sunday, Sept. 27, road closures throughout the city, mainly in the downtown area, are expected to affect navigating the downtown area during the week. A full interactive map of race routes and road closures around the city for the entire race week is available on their website. 

For faculty and students living off campus who may be directly affected by the road closures, it is their responsibility to make the appropriate arrangements to get to campus, said Cynthia Price, UR’s director of media and public relations.

"All of us who live anywhere near it, will need to arrange our schedules accordingly," Price said. "We do not control the outside roads, and each of us needs to take responsibility that way." 

The good news is the races will not affect the campus directly throughout the week, Price said. There may be traffic in the surrounding roads and areas, but campus itself will be business as usual. 

There have not yet been any major concerns raised by students or staff in regards to getting to campus throughout the week, Price said, but that may change once the races begin. 

After considering the road closures and activity in downtown Richmond, the UR Downtown offices and programming space decided to close for the week, said Kimberly Dean, UR Downtown program director.

“The programming that we typically do in our space usually caters to an on-campus audience," Dean said, "who won’t actually be able to get there because there will be roads that are closed and parking is difficult."

They also decided to close down the UR Downtown space to outside community programming because of the difficulty they would also face in getting to the building, Dean said.

“As for everybody in the city, the road closures up to this point have been a little bit tricky," Dean said, "just because they’ve been changing a lot in terms of what’s closed when, and so that’s been really challenging to navigate." 

Although UR Downtown will be closed, the Richmond on Broad Cafe will remain open throughout the week, catering to the visitors in town for the bike race, Dean said. 

“It’s great to be down there, we’re starting to see visitors coming already,” Dean said. “The café downtown, Richmond on Broad, is just running over with people who clearly are in town for the races, so it’s just really exciting.”

The first on-campus road closure will start Saturday, Sept. 26 at 9 a.m. This will only affect Richmond Way, the short span of road that runs along Boatwright Library and the lake, between Westhampton Way and Lakeview Lane. This will enable UCI to install the start line, tents and other structures needed for the race on Sunday morning, Price said.

At 7:45 a.m. on Sunday, the entire campus race route will close to traffic, opening again once the cyclists clear campus, Price said, but people will still be able to get onto campus that morning. The entire campus should be back to normal operations by that Sunday afternoon. 

Contact managing editor Brooke Harty at brooke.harty@richmond.edu.