Plymouth ready salted for winter

Deliveries of salt are arriving in Plymouth every day this week to fill the salt barn at Prince Rock depot in preparation for winter.

By the end of Friday, the Plymouth Transport and Highways salt barn will be stocked with 1,100 tonnes of salt to treat the city’s roads when cold weather hits over the coming months. Additional deliveries will be made as required through the winter.

Amey, Plymouth City Council’s highways contractor, has its winter service teams and seven gritter vehicles on call 24 hours a day from now until the end of March. They will be monitoring the weather closely all winter via a dedicated forecast station and two sensor stations, to ensure roads are pre-treated with salt before temperatures drop and icy patches form.

A volunteer snow warden scheme has also been launched in recent weeks, to help deliver the Council’s pledge to keep Plymouth moving even in times of extreme weather.

On Saturday (12 October) Amey will be hosting the Winter Roads event in the city centre at the Place de Brest, from 12pm to 4pm, to share information about its winter service including local gritting routes. They will also be telling people about the new snow warden scheme, which people will be able to sign up to there and then.

Councillor Mark Coker, Cabinet Member for Transport said: “Our gritters are on standby and we’re ready for winter. Having a full salt barn and lots of information going out to the public about winter readiness will help ensure our city’s resilience over the coming months, no matter what the winter conditions.

“I’d encourage people to think about signing up to the volunteer snow warden scheme which will really help their local neighbourhoods, and other things they can do to travel safely in winter conditions. Small actions like checking tyre pressures and topping up screen wash levels could make all the difference on winter journeys in the city and beyond.”

Information about Plymouth roads in winter is available at www.plymouth.gov.uk/wintermaintenance including gritting routes and locations of salt bins. There is also a fact sheet that can be downloaded.

Winter roads – useful facts
* PTH’s winter roads service runs from 1 October to 31 March
* The city has a fleet of seven gritting vehicles
* A full gritting run will cover 42 per cent of the city’s road network (380 km) and takes about four hours
* During the 2012/2013 winter season, the coldest since 1962, we carried out 40 early morning inspections and used 1,638 tonnes of salt to treat primary routes 31 times and secondary routes 27 times
* People can find out if they are on a gritting route by visiting the winter service pages at www.plymouth.gov.uk
* Footpaths are not routinely gritted
* There are 400 grit bins around the city which can be used by members of the public to treat public roads or footpaths – these are not for use on private property
* ‘Grit’ is actually salt - you only need to use one tablespoon of grit to treat one square metre of public footway.
* You can request winter services such as grit box refilling by calling PTH on 01752 668000 or emailing plymouth.watchman@amey.co.uk