Texas - No Urban Assault Race in Dallas

For the first time since 2002, there will be no UAR in Dallas. Here's the list of cities for this year:
Seattle
Portland
Austin
Ft Collins
Denver
Madison
Minneapolis
Chicago

I for one am quite bummed about it.
My plan for this year's race was to hopefully team up with Stray Cat again to race here in Dallas and then run it again in Austin with my 10-yr-old daughter.

There is now an UAR Facebook page and here is what Josh had to say on the matter:

We made changes to the schedule for many reasons, but the main reason is that we really try to get folks out on bikes for transportation. The cities that we cut are not very well set up for bike transportation - hopefully this will change in time. We could always come back to a city, but for 2008, we're looking at hitting the main cycling cities west of the Mississippi River (New Belgium does not distribute their beer East of the Mississippi - yet.)
So - that's why. We're sorry to bum out all you folks that no longer have a race in their hometown. However, when we open up registration, we'll offer a great deal to encourage you to make it out to one of our other events.
So...there you have it.

Not sure that I agree with his reasoning, but it is his toy and he can play with it however he wants.

having lived in Dallas and now in Denver I can see his logic. Biking around Dallas (especially in the context of this event, which sends people into the streets in ways you'd never normally do on a bike) is not exactly the safest thing. I participated in the UAR here two summers ago (came in 3rd overall, 2nd coed), and we were taking lanes and acting like critical massers on crack. It worked here because Denver's used to seeing bikes everywhere already. Not quite the case in Dallas. Shrug.

Denver's a great city, you should make plans to come do the UAR up here :D

It's not like the streets are teeming with cars at 9:00am on Sunday morning.

If his goal is to promote cycling as transportation, then wouldn't it make sense to take the race to cities that need to draw attention to that sort of thing?

Dallas has made a some concessions for cyclists in the last year, (wide outside lanes on all new streets and some existing streets, allowing bikes on light rail and busses, expansion of bike path system to take it into downtown). So it is more bike-friendly now than it has been in the past.

I have to wonder if the loss of Subaru as the title sponsor doesn't play a bigger part in this. A lot of cars are sold in Dallas, each year and I'd be willing to bet they wanted the race to run here.

If I sound bitter, it's because I am. I'm not going to make a decision about participating in another city until I've cooled off a bit.

They should have one in Sachse. Run it right through the 4-way stop in front of the swine barn.