Back roads were fine and dry here.
Main roads were wet and slippery, with loose grit outside of the vehicle running line that gave loose traction, especially on bends. Then a Police Traffic car went past on blues+twos (so quite probably to an accident) and kicked up all sorts of salty grit into my face as it straddled the centre line.
I was thinking more about this yesterday.
Last week I was at the local Council offices and picked up some very interesting facts (if anybody is interested in learning about their area can I recommend going and sitting in the public gallery during Council Meetings).
Here are the winter service arrangements by Essex County Council laid out in a report provided to the Borough Council.
Page 1Page 2The important item to note is the cost - £30,000 each time the gritters go out. The weekend prior to this meeting was when we did have forecast for frost, then snow. The gritters were deployed 9-10pm for a pre-treatment run on the Saturday, then because the weather forecast was still predicting snow at 7am on Sunday the gritters were sent out again at 5-6am with instructions to lay a "double dose" of salt (i.e. twice the amount as usual).
The snow did arrive spot on 7am. The sun came up and the roads were dry and warm by 10:30am.
That treatment of the roads cost the county council (i.e. my taxes) approximately £60,000, to deal with a temporary problem that Mother Nature resolved completely in a few hours.
Some other facts from the meeting.
A team has been set up with additional money with the intention of tackling potholes on a focussed on-off regime. The budget for that was around £30,000 which the Council acknowledged wouldn't resolve all the road issues but would hit some of them. Compare the values - One gritter run = one complete pothole repair budget.
The money, within the maintenance budget, dedicated to re-painting road markings is again around the £30,000 per year mark. One councillor is desperately trying to get a long length of road on Canvey re-painted as the markings are old and faded, and a bit of a safety hazard now. The cost of repainting that road is a ballpark £5,000 to £7,000 - which everybody could see is a sizeable dent in the budget! Focus may have to be put on just some of the worst blackspots, but the Council also commented that although the paint needs to go down now due to the dark nights and poor weather (when the markings will be most useful for safety) it is not a good idea to paint road markings at the moment due to the residue of salt which means the paint will wear off again much sooner than it should have.
Grit, especially the salt component, damages the roads. Most of the worst potholes appear in the spring, following the salt damage in the winter. Residents of South Essex may recall the major mulit-million pound repair works at the Pitsea flyover on the A13 that took up most of last year? That was repair work required due to the amount of salt damage to the structure. Ironically the flyover was designed with an ice prevention heating system so should never have had salt applied - unfortunately I understand that the system never worked, hence the salting.
Now, (without calling me callous) if we could set emotions aside for a second, what is the financial implication of a road collision? I learnt in the meeting that accountants have set a notional £100,000 figure against each collision resulting in death or serious injury. This figure is by no means the cost of a life, but a ball park figure to allow calculations to be made (you cannot compare apples with pears).
If a junction is to be improved to reduce accidents, one of the value for money calculations that is considered is how many accidents have we had -> how many do we therefore expect per year -> what is the cost of the scheme -> how long will it take to pay for itself. A scheme costing £500,000 to prevent one accident per year will pay for itself in 5 years time.
Remaining emotion free (if that's possible) let us put the same cold logic to gritting.
Cost of gritting - If Essex is £30,000 per run just how much is spent across the country?
Cost of road repairs thanks to gritting - quite a bit.
So, being really really contentious let's have a big public educational advertisement campaign to say that as from next winter no more grit will be laid. Educate people that winter tyres (the soft rubber) are better than the usual hard rubber tyres used in the summer, and that they should drive according to the conditions and not to the expectation that the council have gritted the roads. The money saved on grit and road repair can be pumped back into the road network, resurfacing old tarmac with good grippy stuff and implementing other road safety schemes.
