Roads show true grit in readiness for winter weather

A crew of 30 road workers driving 12 grit lorries and are set to keep East Renfrewshire moving this winter.

Article Source: East Renfrewshire Council
Last Updated: 3 December 2014 10:29

And the ‘winter watch’ team will be helped out by workers from the parks and cleansing squad to spread salt on footways.

The workers operate on a rota and will be available on standby 24/7 until May with more than 8,000 tonnes of salt and 500 tonnes of grit stockpiled and ready to hit the roads and footpaths of the area.

They will also keep topping up the 319 street bins and 18 larger community bins located across the area to help residents help themselves.

East Renfrewshire has 475km of roads. That’s enough to go from here to Edinburgh and back three times. 313km of this is treated as a priority route (this is around 65 per cent which is more than most councils).

And the team is primed for action as soon as there is notice of severe weather from our dedicated weather forecasting service. The road’s service focus is to make sure priority roads are gritted first before moving on to local streets and pavements. They focus on gritting:

• main ‘A’ roads
• access to fire stations
• bus routes to schools
• main bus routes, and
• routes to local employment areas

Cllr Tony Buchanan, East Renfrewshire convener for roads said: "Most people recognise that main roads, access to fire stations and bus routes need to come first before smaller streets are done. To help people to help themselves we’ve got more than 300 street grit bins and some larger community bins in key locations. Priority routes and grit bin locations are listed on the roads and gritting page of the council web site www.eastrenfrewshire.gov.uk.

"As part of East Ren ‘winter watch’ we are also updating the winter weather page of the council web site and our Facebook and Twitter sites with daily weather reports so residents know what to expect each day. And gritting reports are updated twice a day with the most up-to-date details of East Ren gritting action.

"Please remember that although we aim to provide the best possible service, we cannot guarantee that all roads will always be completely free of ice and snow. Some roads carry such high volumes of traffic that congestion occurs at peak periods. Sometimes freezing weather happens at the same time as peak traffic levels. This makes it difficult for gritting vehicles to get on to the road network.

"Even when we have salted the roads, it takes time for it to work; rain can wash the salt off roads and they may ice over again and in severe weather conditions, even salting will not prevent the roads from icing up. In severe conditions we may have to continue treating our main routes until such times as they are considered safe before we can attend to minor roads. If you are out on the roads in bad weather, please take account of the weather conditions."

East Ren winter watch key facts:

• East Renfrewshire has a road network of 475km.
• We have included 313km of this in our priority routes (this is around 65 per cent which is more than most councils).
• Every time there is a forecast of 0 degrees or below we grit 313km of road (normally twice in a 24hour period, that means 626km a day).
• We have more than 700km of footways
• As part of our priority footway routes we treat 64km of footways.
• 30 roads operatives supplemented by staff from our cleansing and parks services provide 24 hour seven days a week coverage for winter maintenance.
• Roads and footways other than those on the priority routes have to wait until the priority routes have been successfully treated and gritting resources become available.
• Only on police instruction/request would we divert from our treatment priorities.

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