Within these pages you will find information regarding Falkirk Council's winter service plan for dealing with the clearance of ice and snow from roads and footways.
Why do we salt the road and footpath network?
The winter service forms an integral part of the road maintenance function and Falkirk Council, by virtue of the Roads (Scotland) Act, 1984 (Section 34) has a statutory duty to 'take such steps as it considers reasonable to prevent snow and ice endangering the safe passage of pedestrian and vehicles over public roads'.
Falkirk Council uses rock salt complying with BS3247 for winter service operations. The use of grit will only be considered when the temperature is extremely low.
How and when do we salt?
Falkirk Council's objective in relation to the winter service is the reduction as far as possible of the effects of adverse weather. To provide travelling conditions as safe as is reasonably possible having regard to financial constraints.
Our aim is to ensure that salt is spread on the roads before ice forms. We achieve this by using a fleet of 10 main line gritters. These gritters spread around 5,000 tonnes of salt on the Falkirk Council road network in an average winter.
We may carry out precautionary salting on receipt of an adverse weather forecast, normally out with peak traffic times before the onset of icy conditions or prior to the morning peak.
Gritting is normally completed within two hours and in the morning situation usually before 08:00 hours.
Which roads are salted?
In order to achieve our objective it is recognised that a priority treatment system is required, which will concentrate on the more important routes and then be extended to the less important routes when resources become available.
With 886 kilometres of council maintained roads it would be prohibitively expensive to treat the entire network. 356 kilometres are normally treated, about 40% of the network.
The winter service essentially comprises the following types of treatment:
-
precautionary salt treatment
-
treatment of ice
-
treatment of snow
Details of the Road priority treatment |system can be found in this section.
Which footways are salted?
'Footway' is the term for the pedestrian walking surface or pavement adjacent to the road carriageway or relatively close to, and parallel with, the carriageway.
The winter service essentially comprises the following types of treatment:
-
precautionary salt treatment
-
treatment of ice
-
treatment of snow
Details of the Footway priority treatment| system can be found in this section.
Footpaths and cycleways
'Footpaths' is the term for a pedestrian walking surface between or remote from roads. These will not normally be treated except where icy conditions last for several days. They will only then be treated if and when the Council has the capacity to do it.
Cycleways will be treated where they form part of the carriageway and will be treated in accordance with the priority for that road. Remote cycleways will not normally be treated except where icy conditions last for several days. They will only then be treated if and when the Council has the capacity to do it.
Weather forecasting and decision making
The Forecast Provider provides us with weather forecasts which include road surface temperature information.
The forecasts form part of our Ice Prediction System which is monitored 24 hours a day throughout the Winter.
During the winter period a Duty Officer Control Room, staffed by officers from Falkirk, Stirling and Clackmannanshire on a rota basis, operates between 17:00 and 09:00 hours on weekdays, and between 17:00 hours Friday to 09:00 hours Monday and public holidays.
There is a number of road weather stations throughout the Falkirk Council area that provide atmospheric and road surface temperature information at each location. This infomation is used by the forecast provider to prepare weather forecasts and to aid the Duty Officers and Duty Managers in their decision making process.
Details of the Road weather stations |can be found in this section.
How can we get it wrong?
No matter how accurate the forecast, there are situations where we cannot grit the network prior to icy conditions. Some of the situations are as follows:
-
When rain is followed by rapidly clearing skies, salting will normally start after the the rain has stopped (to avoid the salt being washed away). Sometimes temperatures may fall by as much as 5 degrees per hour and the wet roads may well freeze before we have started or completed salting.
-
"Dawn frost" occurs on dry roads, when early morning dew develops, falls on a cold road, and freezes on impact. It is impossible to forecast with any accuracy where and when it will occur.
-
Rush hour snowfall, when rain turns to snow coinciding with the rush hour, early salting cannot take place as it would be washed away and gritters cannot make progress due to traffic congestion. We will, however, always carry out salting to remove ice, in line with the road priority. This is not ideal, however, as salting takes longer due to traffic congestion.
If you require information or assistance about the Falkirk Council winter service plan please contact us.