No prizes for guessing this one:
TfL received the first request from boroughs for assistance with grit supply on Monday morning, when Hammersmith & Fulham advised directly that they had run out. TfL’s HMWCs were able to assist with 50 tonnes supply, but were obviously concerned about impact the on stocks for the TLRN.
Since LBHF apparently only have two gritters and according to our cycling spy prj45:
I did find it a bit bizzare that the Uxbridge road was sort of OK until nearing Shepherds Bush, whence upon it became a solid sheet of ice, which turned back into muddy slush at the Shepherd’s Bush green.
…one wonders quite how much of the stuff they had and where it went. Uxbridge Road is hardly an obscure cul-de-sac after all. The full list of boroughs cutting back on their salt intake:
- Hammersmith & Fulham 50T
- Sutton 58T
- Southwark 82T
- Lambeth 24T (+50T Wed, 4 Feb)
- Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea 57T
- Waltham Forest 50T
- and also treated the Croydon Tram network with 5T
Tags: No5 Comments
5 responses so far ↓
Personally I think the borough’s that ran out first are better than the others…Why waste money on keeping salt for all the roads in the borough when conditions like the one seen only happen once a decade?
“Why waste money on keeping salt for all the roads in the borough when conditions like the one seen only happen once a decade?”
What the night of “heavy” snow, or the length of the period when the councils need to grit the roads anyway due to ice?
The roads need to be gritted every year surely? They don’t just need to grit them once a decade…
the roads need gritting quite a lot more often than is made out by the “the costs dont justify it” cabal .Admittedly you do have the london heat island, but that only raises things up by about 2 degrees in winter in the most central parts (Ken did a report about UHI few years back but its more tuned into the summer months), black ice is a common thing every winter, hardly once a decade
I agree you definitely need to grit all roads when icy, however I have never had a time when I couldn’t drive in Fulham apart from that one day.
I’ll be honest I’m not really an expert on gritting roads, but it seems quite likely that more grit would be needed for heavy snow than normal ice
[...] watchers noted, memorable for such scenes as Tory flagship cost-cutters Hammersmith and Fulham running out of grit first and going to TfL for supplies. Despite that we had bus cancellations because the [...]