4 November 2004
DRD ROADS SERVICE PREPARED FOR WINTER WEATHER
From now until the end of March DRD Roads Service will have 160 staff on standby every night to salt roads, to help keep traffic on main roads flowing freely and safely in wintry conditions. However, Minister of State, John Spellar, MP, warned motorists that despite the high quality of the salting operation, ice-free roads could not be guaranteed.
Speaking at the launch of this year’s winter service operation the Minister said: "It takes over three hours to salt a route, so your journey could start or end on an untreated section of road. Remember, salt does not act immediately; it needs vehicles to turn the salt and ice into an effective solution and it can refreeze after salting.
"I appeal to all motorists to heed the advice in the Highway Code; drive with care even if roads have been salted, be prepared for road conditions changing over short distances and take care when overtaking gritters."
Roads Service provides a winter gritting service from November to March every year. This is a massive logistical undertaking that involves salting nearly 7,000 kilometers of roads, in just over three hours, across Northern Ireland, at a cost of £74,000 per night.
The Minister said: "The salting operation is vital to keep main road traffic moving in wintry conditions and in line with the procedures agreed by the Assembly, £5 million is set aside for this essential work. On average there are around 75 call outs each year and a massive 63,000 tonnes of salt is spread by Roads Service to keep main road traffic moving in frost or snow.
"However, even with the most careful and thorough planning and use of state-of-the-art technology, winter maintenance is a battle against nature and in exceptional winter conditions there is bound to be some disruption."
Engineers use state of the art technology to assist with the operation including ice sensors linked to 17 weather stations across Northern Ireland, installed in conjunction with the Meteorological Office, and thermal mapping of all roads on the network. The Met Office uses information from the stations along with their own data to provide forecasts, which are transmitted to engineers’ computers. This year alone a further three new temperature only sensors powered by solar panels have been installed at sites in the Mournes, north of Ballymoney and near Belfast.
Roads Service ensures that motorists are kept fully up to date with road conditions at this time of year. Information on salting activities is relayed electronically to the broadcast media to ensure the latest news on road conditions is available to motorists. Our winter service leaflet is also available to help inform the public about winter driving.
The Minister said: "It is Roads Service’s policy to salt main through routes carrying more than 1,500 vehicles per day and other busy through routes carrying more than 1,000 vehicles per day where there are difficult circumstances such as steep hills. In applying the criteria, buses get a high weighting, a 40-seater bus is counted as 40 vehicles.
"Efforts are made to ensure that small settlements of more than 100 dwellings have a salted link via the shortest route to the salted network and consideration is given to placing grit piles or salt boxes at hills, bends or junctions on roads that are not salted."
During long periods of heavy snowfall maximum effort will be concentrated on the key traffic routes. Clearing snow from motorways and the trunk roads will be given priority before moving to ‘A’ class roads and the busiest urban link roads. Once these main routes are open to traffic, Roads Service’s resources will be diverted to the less heavily trafficked roads, especially in urban areas, and will continue until all roads are cleared. Contractors and farmers will be employed to clear blocked roads.
The Minister concluded: "The salted network is around 6,800 km (4,225 miles) and covers 28% of Northern Ireland’s roads and caters for 80 per cent of traffic. Whilst I can understand the concerns of those who use the more lightly trafficked roads that are not included in the salted network, it is simply not practical to salt all roads. To cover 90 per cent of traffic, we would have to double the size of the treated network and the cost would double to £10 million."
The Roads Service winter service leaflet is available by calling 028 9054 0540 or from the website at www.roadsni.gov.uk
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