Royal Borough well prepared for winter on the roads

With temperatures forecast to dip this weekend, the Royal Borough is armed and ready with its annual winter maintenance season which starts on Friday 26 October.

The council's maintenance contractors, Ameys, have more than 800 tons of Safecoat salt in readiness for a cold winter and will be on 24-hour standby until the end of March 2013.

The council has also built up stocks of grit bins across the borough, with more than 60 highways yellow bins together with some 80 green community bins which are managed by residents themselves, parish councils or other local groups.

Cllr Phill Bicknell, lead member for highways, said this week: "We never lose sight of the need to protect road users - both motorists and pedestrians - and this is more important than ever in the cold days and nights of winter.

"The arrangements we have in place are ready for any bad weather this season and there are additional teams on standby to maintain access to town centres, car parks and schools in particular if we get severe snow. Ameys also have direct access to several thousand tonnes of salt in reserve stocks should we need it."

Cllr Bicknell issued a timely reminder to residents to make sure their cars are ready for winter driving conditions and to visit the RAC website at www.rac.co.uk and the AA website at www.theaa.com for common sense advice and tips.

The annual gritting programme is monitored by the council's highways and engineering team, with duty managers on 24-hour call. Using information from a dedicated forecast system, supplemented by computerised road sensors, they make decisions on when to send out the gritter lorries.

Road salting is carried out on a priority basis:
• primary routes - make up more than one-third of the borough's roads, covering approx 145 miles (232km) and carrying the heaviest traffic and are regularly salted when road conditions are likely to deteriorate
• secondary routes - some 7% of the network covering another 31 miles (41km) and salted during prolonged adverse weather conditions; they include bus routes, roads outside schools, hospitals and some minor roads
• town centre footways - in Maidenhead, Windsor, Ascot, Cookham, Datchet, Eton, Old Windsor, Sunningdale and Sunninghill, also salted during prolonged adverse weather conditions.

The aim is to complete the salting before any roads become icy. Spreading the salt usually takes about four hours from the time a decision is taken.
Full details of all the roads on the borough's primary and secondary routes, as well as the town centre footways on the winter gritting programme, are at www.rbwm.gov.uk

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