Monday 4th October 2004

Gritters clog the roads today

But don't panic...there's a reason

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Don't panic -- if you see a gritter or snowplough on motorways and other trunk roads in Hampshire, Oxfordshire, Surrey, Dorset or South Wiltshire today it's not because you've missed the weather forecast. And you shouldn't need to take precautions to protect the paint on the front end of your car either. The gritters are out because the Highways Agency tells us it's giving its winter maintenance vehicles and procedures a thorough 'dry run', to check that everything is in working order before the cold weather sets in.

The full-scale winter maintenance test exercise, covering the Agency's Area 3 in Central Southern England, will also include testing of the weather forecasting and communications equipment. The aim of the exercise is to make sure that staff, equipment and procedures are prepared for severe winter weather in the coming months.

During the exercise, 33 gritting vehicles, laden with salt, will be sent out to drive their routes on the motorways and trunk roads in central southern England.  Snowploughs will also be fitted to the vehicles in an exercise that simulates severe winter weather gripping the South. They also tell us that a grim 14,720 tonnes of salt was used in the cold weather last year.

[Cotty]

glad to see there on the ball

[jvaughan]

Bloody Great, and I bet they all started at 7am this morning, to assist in making my drive to work hell as usual

[beano500]

Wouldn't have been much of a "dry" run this am....

[britten_mark]

With road salt at £30/tonne, plus fuel, staff costs etc, that sounds like a hellish expensive (not to mention wasteful)dry run.

[manek]

Not sure they plan to actually drop the salt...

[Muncher]

britten_mark said:

With road salt at £30/tonne, plus fuel, staff costs etc, that sounds like a hellish expensive (not to mention wasteful)dry run.

Why not do the run not laden with salt, surely that much weight increases fuel costs!

[beano500]

Muncher said:

britten_mark said: With road salt at £30/tonne, plus fuel, staff costs etc, that sounds like a hellish expensive (not to mention wasteful)dry run. Why not do the run not laden with salt, surely that much weight increases fuel costs!

Load it with a few tonnes of pies to keep PHers happy while commuting?

[Munter]

Muncher said:

britten_mark said: With road salt at £30/tonne, plus fuel, staff costs etc, that sounds like a hellish expensive (not to mention wasteful)dry run. Why not do the run not laden with salt, surely that much weight increases fuel costs!

Because they need to see if it runs out of fuel before finishing it's route, the suspention gives up...etc etc

[rpguk]

britten_mark said:

With road salt at £30/tonne, plus fuel, staff costs etc, that sounds like a hellish expensive (not to mention wasteful)dry run.

Expensive, but I'm sure far less so than a repeat of the fiascio of past years.

[Pesmo]

They would also need to check that they are capable of loading X tonnes per hour into Y trucks, so they probably fired up a few loading shovels or gravity feeding hoppers as well. They could also be checking that they are getting the right distribution of vehicles in the correct places given different scenarios

I guess it all makes sense. As someone who has had two long nights stuck on the M11/M25 in the last two years in snow and sheet ice this seems to me like good planning by Hampshire.

Maybe a few more should follow their example. In the big picture the fuel costs are negligable.

>> Edited by Pesmo on Tuesday 5th October 17:35