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With winter approaching have local authorities got sufficient resources to keep the roads clear or are we likely to see a repeat of the conditions which made many southern roads impassable last year?
It is really a tale of the haves and havenots as far as the ability to carry out winter maintenance goes . On one hand is the Highways Agency which is responsible for trunk roads and motorways. This agency is prepared to devote unlimited resources to keeping its roads open and claims that it has had a 99.9% success rate in recent years on the motorway network.
"As far as I know we have been able to keep the whole of the motorway network open, with the exception of a few lane closures and nearly all of the trunk roads. We aim to grit all of our roads as a precaution within two hours of receiving a had weather forecast," says a HA spokesman, adding: "The agency has its own cash problems but regards winter maintenance as a priority and will break budgets if necessary" The bad news for drivers is that HA roads comprise only 4% of the network but they do carry around 60% of all freight traffic.
However, once you get off main routes the problems really start. The National Audit Office has set local authorities the target of pre-treating only 20-25% of their network and many are struggling to reach even this ridiculously low level.
It is easy for drivers to blame councils for icy and difficult road conditions but in most cases it is not their fault. Ian Cocherene of Highland Council, which has just suffered a further 5% cut in its winter maintenance budget, says: If we had five times the money we would treat tive times the area of road."
The problem is that money for local authorities has been progres sively cut and what little remains tends to he diverted to other areas with mad maintenance being given a very low priority. There are 4,670 miles of road in the Highlands hut the council is able to precautionary salt only what it calls priority one roads—A, B and a few C class roads, This means that the vast majority of the network is untreated.
In Norfolk, a county criticised by drivers for having difficult winter roads, the county has actually managed to increase the number of roads that are pre-salted but still manages to treat only 24% of its network,
"Even this level of treatment— which is within NAO guidelines—
gives us a major headache, as it stretches our resources to breaking point. We should be able to maintain the service for the coming winter
but, like many other councils, I am extremely worried that we will have
to make cuts next winter," says Chris Mitchell, group engineer in Norfolk's highways department.
The council, which is responsible for 6,000 miles of highway, uses many of the latest techniques includ ing ice detectors and thermal mapping of 620 miles of road but when it comes to snow clearance it is all hands to the pump. Norfolk tends to use its own machines to clear the major roads but for minor routes it has contracts with 80 farmers who are provided with snow ploughs to tit to their tractors, and it also uses contractors' JCBs.
Kent is another county which uses farmers' tractors in addition to the 100 gritters it runs nightly in bad weather. The county says it will be able to maintain last year's service with the exception of refilling salt bins which are available for drivers to use in had weather. One of the main problems, it is understood, is that the -salt is regularly stolen and then sold to householders to clear their drives.
Kent will, however, still be able to precautionary salt around 2,000 miles of its 5,000mile network, one of the highest percentage figures in the country Other councils with a good record of precautionary salting are Hertfordshire, which will salt 45% of its network, and Derbyshire which will achieve a staggering 50%. Neil Hickman of the council's highways department says: "We are able to treat such a high proportion of our roads because members of the council recognise the importance of proper winter maintenance and have voted us sufficient funds to carry out the work."
Struggle
However, Northumberland County Council is more typical in what winter maintenance it can carry out. The county is the second coldest in Britain but Nigel Jamieson, the council's client maintenance manager, says: "We are ahle to treat only 20% of our network and it is a struggle to do even that. This is because in the past five years our overall maintenance budget, from which we have to pay for winter maintenance, has been cut from :Wm to just £8.7m, "This has meant we have had to pare down our direct labour workforce from hundreds of people to just 108, few of whom have HGV licences. We can just about cope at the moment but any further cuts will mean we will not have enough drivers to carry out our regular gritting runs.
"Furthermore, we have been kicked in the bollocks by the Government over the privatisation of its trunk road maintenance programme. Currently the I lighways Agency pays us 25% of our winter maintenance costs to treat its roads but once it privatises road maintenance we will lose this cash. This will make the treatment of our own roads that much more expensive because in order to get to them we will have to drive along main roads which we are no longer able to treat," Jamieson adds.
Local councils up and down the country are hoping and praying for a mild winter so they can get through it with their existing slender budgets. They are aware of the dangers in not treating all major roads but say they are doing all they can under difficult circumstances.
The real problem, they say, lies with central government and pressure must be put on it to provide more funds for winter maintenance. Things are still getting worse so we will soon reach the point when thousands of roads will become too difficult even for commercial vehicles to drive along in winter.
Ll by Mike Sherrington
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TI ON S
John Andrev Dronfield-base driver developmer manager of Ex( Logistics, gives a le reminders.
* Drive to suit th conditions.
ri) Pay particulc attention to the stat
f the tyres and the 'mount of anti-freeze 1 the radiator.
If you get delayed ,y the weather and re two to three ours away from the lepot when you run ,ut of hours, park p.
If you get stuck,
stay with the vehicle. e Pay attention to having clean mirrors. iii If road conditions are particularly bad on the approaches to a customer's yard, walk down to see if there's any way the load can be delivered safely.