Winter Gritter Tracker provides roads advice
West Lothian Council have released an online Gritter Tracker again this winter.
Residents in the county are able to check exactly where gritters are deployed when treatment for ice or snow is deemed necessary.
The move is to allow residents to view the locations of winter vehicles and allow residents to better understand what routes the council can and does treat.
However, the council have said throughout that primary roads must be their main concern.
A spokesperson explained: “It is important to understand that it is not possible to treat all routes simultaneously. The council must adopt a priority system to ensure that the treatment is targeted to areas of greatest need first and we have classified all roads and footpaths within West Lothian as either a primary or secondary gritting route.
“Secondary routes are further broken down into levels one, two and three.
“It is extremely unlikely that the entire network will be fully treated at any one time, we just don’t have the resources, so we must prioritise.
“Furthermore, weather conditions mean we often need to return to the beginning of the priority cycle which can prevent any significant progress through the priority levels. In the winter months, West Lothian Council has to treat over 1000 km of roads and around 1300 km of footways to combat the effects of bad weather. To give this some context, West Lothian’s foot and road network together would stretch from West Lothian to Sicily, Italy. Priority routes are shown on the Gritter Tracker map above. It should also be noted that only Primary routes are treated out with normal working hours - all other route classifications are treated during normal working hours only.
“We also need to ensure that drivers comply with working time and driver hours legislation.We have a rota system in place to ensure our resources are maximised whilst staying within the law but it is not always possible to resource the entire fleet at any one time, nor is it always necessary.”
To view the tracker: https://www. westlothian.gov.uk/grittertracker