Common Questions on Winter Maintenance

Our aim is to provide an effective and efficient winter maintenance service, using the resources available. This is to allow safe passage of vehicles and pedestrians, minimise delays due to winter weather, and ensure operations are undertaken safely.

Further Information on how Routes are Prioritised for Salting

In addition to the pre-salting treatment of priority carriageways and footways, post treatment of secondary carriageways and footways, based on the 56 neighbourhoods in the city, will be instructed given the presence of ice or snow and a forecast that these conditions will last for a period longer than it would take to treat the roads.

It should be noted however, that if priority routes require treatment during any extended period of ice or snow their treatment will take precedence over secondary route treatment.

If it is forecast that ice or snow is likely to be present on road surfaces, carriageways are prioritised for treatment outwith normal working hours, based on the following criteria:

• All bus routes registered at the end of summer in any year within the City.
• Roads or parts of roads not used by buses but being A or B class roads, or other roads connecting the preceding category to complete the major road network.
• The dropping off points on public carriageways from the nearest gritted route for special school buses and ambulances.
• The start points to the gritted route from: fire stations; police stations; bus garages and emergency vehicle locations.
• Roads to Park and Ride car parks.
• Hills steeper than 1 in 10 gradient.
• Any other public road which has premises with a vehicular access that is more than 600m urban from a salted route as above - where a suitable turning area within 600m of the vehicular access exists.
• Specially designated industrial areas.
• In addition arrangements are in place with Strathclyde Passenger Transport for the treatment of Park and Ride station car parks, Buchanan St bus station and bus turning areas.

If it is forecast that ice or snow is likely to be present on footways, they are prioritised for treatment outwith normal working hours based on the following criteria:

• Pedestrian precincts.
• Prioritised city centre footways with high pedestrian traffic.
• Shopping centres outwith the city centre.
• Access routes to schools.
• Hills steeper than 1 in 10 gradient with moderate pedestrian traffic.

The remainder of the footway network will be undertaken in conjunction with the carriageways where practical, otherwise separately on an area basis as resources dictate.