Winter maintenance
Defining a road treatment strategy
Winter maintenance takes place to ensure the safety and continuity of road users' journeys during winter weather.
However, delivering winter service is complex due to the diversity of meteorological and road weather situations. In a context where preserving the environment is becoming paramount, and where experience has shown that "more salting" does not amount to "better treatment", it is necessary to optimise winter maintenance actions. This guide helps managers to take a questioning look at their practices, and define their road treatment strategies and procedures.
It offers practical informations, some of which will be new at least in its presentation format, plus real-life technical examples designed to be easy for operators to apply. It also emphasises the importance of sharing a common vocabulary.
Acknowledgements
Chapiter 1 - Introduction
- Aim of the guide
- Objectives of interventions
- The "instruction" concept
Chapiter 2 - Intervention strategies
- Salt spreading strategies
- Snow treatment strategy
Chapiter 3 - The different road weather phenomena
- Ice
- The different types of snow
- Influence of atmospheric conditions on road surface temperature
Chapiter 4 - Products used in winter maintenance
- Road de-icing agents
- Other types of de-icing agent
- Abrasives
- Environmental impacts
Chapiter 5 - Equipment and materials
- Spreading
- Snow removal
- Automatic brine spraying stations
- New technologies
Chapiter 6 - Treatment instructions
- Ice
- Snow
Chapiter 7 - Organisational structure – quality of the decision
- Preparing the instruction in advance
- Selecting and specifying the instruction for a situation
- Formally documenting the instruction
Bibliography
Appendices
- Appendix 1 - Decision support tools
- Appendix 2 - Action principle of road de-icing agents
- Appendix 3 - Equipment and materials
- Appendix 4 - Influence of traffic
- Appendix 5 - Road surfacings / Wearing courses – Grip
- Appendix 6 - Decision support sheet for the Intervention Manager (IM)
- Appendix 7 - Patrol sheet
- Appendix 8 - Log book format and contents
- Appendix 9 - Glossary / Terminology relating to road weather phenomena
