Gritters ready to treat 566km of road

When snow falls or ice is predicted, gritting trucks will nightly this winter cover 566km of Westmeath’s roads, members of Westmeath County Council were informed at their October meeting.

At the meeting, senior engineer Damien Grennan said that the key word objective is to keep the major traffic routes safe and as free as possible from hazardous road conditions.

To that end, the schedule involves the gritting of 78km of motorway and dual carriageway, which is undertaken by a contractor on behalf of Transport Infrastructure Ireland.

A further 105km, comprising national primary and national secondary roads, are also gritted, together with 316km of the regional road network and 67km of what are designated key local roads.

The figures represent a 27 per cent growth in route coverage over the schedule that applied 10 years ago: in 2012, the gritting total amounted to 444km. Mr Grennan said that as part of the council’s modernisation of its winter services, it began the switch to the use of brine during the 2021/2022 season, and now, five of the seven routes have fully transitioned to brine, resulting in a saving on salt costs.

He said it his intention to complete the expansion of the brine application to all routes before the end of this season.

The brine manufacturing station is located at Clonmore in Mullingar, and a 30,000 litre rainwater harvesting tank is used to provide the water required for the manufacture of the brine.

Mr Grennan also explained that the council has a maximum route treatment time of four hours.

The service is provided by a team of four engineers who are on call week about, together with seven drivers along with a number of relief drivers in case of a prolonged severe weather event.

The team has use of seven trucks with demountable salt spreaders, and two with permanent salt spreaders. Five of the vehicles are compatible with brine operation.

There are also 12 snowploughs and two loading shovels and the service has depots in both Mullingar and Athlone.

Last year, the service was out on 59 nights; on 13 of those occasions, they had to do two treatment runs and overall they used 3,009 tonnes of salt.

Mr Grennan said the winter services plan and the gritting routes are published annually, and are available on the council website. He said if incidents are prolonged or there is snow, strategic footpaths in Mullingar and Athlone are treated.

Flooding

In terms of flooding preparedness, there is, he said, a flood emergency plan in place.

"The Athlone flood alleviation scheme is substantially complete. And there’s an annual interagency meeting held at Athlone to prepare for potential flooding events.

"River Shannon levels and flows are monitored on an ongoing basis – nearly a daily basis."

Staff also have access to the national Severe Weather and Flood Forecast Centre operated by Met Éireann.

Cllr Tom Farrell said it was great to see that all the regional roads are now covered and he complimented the team on the work they are doing.

Compliments came too from Cllr Ken Glynn, who was keen that when there are bad weather events happening, that the council be sure to get word of its schedule out, while Cllr Vinny McCormack praised the team for their work, and hoped additional local roads could be added if more equipment is obtained.

Cllr Denis Leonard said the work being done is "outstanding", but queried what the policy is about gritting around schools, while Cllr Louise Heavin felt footpaths in towns other than Moate and Athlone should be gritted: "It’s a particular issue with older people who have limited mobility and who already are using walking aids. And I guess when we have events like this, we don’t want to keep people housebound because we haven’t done their footpaths," she said.

Cllr Frankie Keena wondered about having arterial roads added, such as that from Mount Temple to Baylin. He also expressed concern about the hazard that wet fallen leaves can pose for pedestrians, while cathaoirleach, Cllr Liam McDaniel, said a lot of the floods on local roads occur where water cuts are not open, and he wondered whose responsibility they are.

Responding, Mr Grennan said the staff are constantly looking at the possibility of adding roads – and as the brine operation becomes greater, this may free up capacity and facilitate that.

He noted the point about footpaths and said if a prolonged event occurs, they will see what they can do; there is a continual programme of opening water cuts.