More night shifts in gritting schedule Depots in Crieff and Kinross-shire to be included
High-priority roads in parts of Perth and Kinross are to be added to those gritted overnight in the winter months.
Perth and Kinross Council’s environment, enterprise and infrastructure committee agreed to include sections near Crieff and in Kinrossshire in a new night-time winter maintenance plan .
These will be in addition to the night shifts currently operating out of the depots in Perth and Blairgowrie, with a night control unit set to be introduced to manage these shifts.
Kinross-shire member Mike Barnacle said: “The introduction of extra night shifts will be particularly welcome in Kinross-shire as the A977 is particularly difficult in the early morning.”
Further winter plans were agreed on by the council, including timescales for gritting the region’s 2500km of roads.
A total of 900km-worth of high-priority roads will be treated seven days a week.
‘Category two’ roads, meanwhile, will be treated five days a week “as resources permit”. But ‘category three’ roads – a term which encompasses most of the rural areas within the region – will not be treated unless there is prolonged ice and snow, and only when resources become available.
The report passed by elected members said: “In periods of prolonged severe weather, resources are targeted towards keeping strategic roads and footway networks open. As a result, it can be a considerable time, in some cases several days, before lower priority routes are
Iain Waddell, Tayside Contracts managing director, former depute provost Bob Band, driver Peter McGinn and David Bowes, convener of the Tayside Contracts joint committee at the time, alongside a snowblower in 2015 reached.”
To compensate for this, the council wants to encourage more members of the public to grit their own roads themselves, and hopes to introduce 20 new hand-gritters to help.
Following on from what was described as last year’s “success” in replacing rock salt grit with a brine solution, more routes will be treated like this.
The report read: “It is proposed to continue to carry out de-icing treatments on the Perth and Blairgowrie night shift routes for winter 2017/18, using a brine solution instead of traditional rock salt. This will continue to give savings of around 30%. In addition to the brine saturator equipment previously in place at the Ruthvenfield depot in Perth, an additional brine saturator unit has been installed at the Blairgowrie depot.”
Footways in Perth city centre, North Muirton, Bridge of Earn, Milnathort, Kinross and Blairgowrie will also be treated.
The council has also upgraded one of its snow-blowers, which will now be based in Blair Atholl, alongside an existing snowblower in Glenshee.