Environment and roads

• Salting route search - find out if we salt your road

During the Winter season Hertfordshire County Council is responsible for keeping the highways in a safe condition. Forty per cent of Hertfordshire’s roads, including bus routes are salted when required, which means that most people will live on or very close to a treated route.

It is unrealistic to attempt to treat all roads during cold weather conditions. Priority is given to maintaining safe driving conditions on an agreed network of roads on the following priority basis. For pre-cautionary salting purposes, only priority 1 and 2 roads will be salted.

Priority 1

• Primary Roads

Priority 2

• Main Distributor Roads
• Secondary Distributor Roads
• Roads serving industrial and shopping centres
• Scheduled Bus Routes
• One road into each village
• Urban Cycleways

Priority 3

• Other roads with steep gradients in urban / residential areas
• Rural roads with poor drainage or where running or standing water is a hazard

Priority 4

• The remainder of the road network

How do we decide what action is needed?

The County Council has a network of road surface sensors throughout the County that monitor road and air temperatures. Meteo Group provides the County Council with daily forecasts of predicted weather conditions that are continually updated. Conditions vary across the county, and the roads are not automatically salted every time there is a forecast of frost. We consider:

• whether or not the road surfaces are wet or dry
• the likelihood of rain, sleet or snow
• existing levels of salt on the highway

The People

The County Council's gritters and their crews are ready to take action when called upon at any time of the day and night over the winter period. The operations are controlled by a team of weather duty officers that are on call 24 hours a day to monitor weather conditions and decide appropriate action.

Targets

The effectiveness of any winter maintenance action relies on response at the right time and completion within as short a time as possible.

The target time for reaching a daily decision is 15.00 hrs to ensure that the salting crews are aware of any action required before they leave their depots. At weekends the same target time is achieved, although crews are notified at their homes. For the majority of occasions this time is satisfactory but there will be instances where decisions have to be made at other times of the day or night.

Spreading of salt is normally undertaken after the evening peak hour or before the morning peak. Under most circumstances frost will not occur on the road surface until late evening or early morning.

Targets for completion of pre-cautionary salting are defined as :

• Maximum response time ( from time of decision to start of salt journey) – one and a half hours
• Maximum treatment time ( from start of salt journey to end of salt spreading )- two and a half hours

Footways

Where heavy or prolonged snowfalls accumulate on well used footways, arrangements will be made to clear a route for pedestrians as soon as practical. If freezing conditions persist, footways cleared of snow should be given a light salting to melt the ice.

Clearance of snow from less heavily used footways will depend upon the anticipated duration of freezing conditions. Provided the more heavily used footways have been cleared and freezing conditions are expected to persist, then these footways may be cleared.

Snow

Treatment of snow will often be necessary in two phases. Prior to snow falling, a pre-cautionary salt can greatly assist the subsequent removal of snow. Once snow has settled, removal will normally be carried out with snow ploughs. In exceptional circumstances, removal will be carried out with snow blowers or excavators.

For light snow falls of between 20 and 40 mm, salting prior to snow falling and after at a higher spread rate will normally be sufficient to melt the snow. For heavier snow falls and drifting over 40mm in depth, snow ploughing will be necessary. In this instance, local area office managers will determine where the greatest demand for ploughing exists. The majority of ploughing vehicles will be deployed on Priority 1 and 2 roads until these are clear before moving onto the remainder of the road network.

At times of heavy snow fall, local farmers and other contractors are on call to assist in clearing roads.