Live blog: Olympic track champ Kristina Vogel airlifted to hospital after serious crash, big news on the way for Greater Manchester cyclists + more

Harrogate is an events/visitor/tourism town. Don't be surprised if it puts on events. It can't always be the Eurovision Song Contest.

The moaning about road closures was bound to start - I'm surprised it's taken them this long. But, as at the TDF, the World Champs will be overwhelmingly supported by local people.

Businesses in town massively overestimate how many people arrive there by car. Just stop complaining, look for the opportunities, and it will be a big success.

It's likely that the Range Rovers have caused the potholes.

I don't think it's anywhere near as big a problem as Yorkshire Wallet claims. Maybe you rode Penny Pot Lane? That one has a less than perfect surface, but it is shown as Rough Road on an OS map.

Don't bother cycling anywhere around Harrogate, the roads are shocking. Been out that way today, think I've vibration white finger now. 

The country roads are shit and the urban roads are beyond shit. You get these roads full of £1m houses and the roads look someone lifted them from Syria. Now wonder everyone drives Rangepigs. 

With regards to the Harrowgate business impact assessment, I'd hope that they have enough time to start collecting data about footfall and conversion rates.

It will probably drive business to catering outlets (restaurants and cafes for example), but if you run something that is unlikely to attract inwards trade (a launderette or a pet shop for example) then you might well be worried about business impacts.

If the council had a clear picture of spending patterns over the course of the year, then they could look at what impacts an event of this type has and perhaps compensate those businesses that lose out (a reduction in business rates for example?). Without this research it's all meaningless.

Quote:

leaders in Harrogate have asked councillors to consider the impact that the UCI Road World Champs will have on business when it comes to the town next September.

The word "impact" is surely being used negatively in this context but they're looking the wrong way down the telescope. Surely any business would see it as a chance to sell stuff to the thousands of cycling fans hanging around for a day or a long weekend. Use your imagination folks, isn't that why you're considered as entrepreneurs and "business people"? Otherwise you might as well give up and get a job in a supermarket.

To call it cyclist priority is slightly misleading; that implies cyclists have somehow been given priority over other traffic on the roundabout. Instead, it's taken cyclists off the roundabout and given them a circumferential lane which has priority over the main carriageway where the two intersect. Cyclists choosing to remain on the main carriageway (I don't know the law regarding mandatory cycle lanes in Melbourne?) do not have priority! In fact, it's a "Dutch style" roundabout. I think we might even have one or two somewhere in the UK. 

That'll be a "fixed", not a "fixie"

Interesting development in Melbourne.  Are the Aussies finally waking up to the disaster of their anti-cycling policies of the past thirty years?