Shoddy planning

We received a notice at our house the other day informing us about a bike race that will be taking place next month. The second leg of this three stage bike race will travel through the streets of Reading on a Thursday. The route for the racers starts downtown, heads up Centre Ave to Richmond St. to 6th St. (right past our house) to Spring St. to 8th St. to downtown again (I can't remember it exactly). Anyway, this is going to cause more problems than the mayor will admit to. First, it's on a Thursday, with the final leg finishing downtown around 5 p.m. This is right around the time that employees downtown, like my mother, will be "attempting" to leave work, only they'll most likely be delayed for a while. Secondly, they want everyone to clear their streets of cars. Parking will be available at the south end of the Reading Station lot, near Oley St. Yet, they didn't mention how anyone who parked there was supposed to get home. Must everyone walk home? Will there be some kind of shuttle service? Either way, we the residents will have to drive or be driven across the race route to even get to the parking lot, let alone get home from it. They'll have fire officials and other volunteers stationed at key intersections to allow traffic through when necessary. I wrote and sent a letter to our honorable Tom McMahon outlining all of these points and why I was upset about them. Will I get a response? Probably not, even though I'd like to hope for one. Now, I'm all in support of bringing events like these to the city as a way to pull people in and generate revenue for city businesses, and to bring prestige to our city. This, however, was poorly planned.