ROAD gritting teams from Leicester City Council are taking to the city’s streets as very cold winter temperatures arrive.
The team of six gritting lorries and 15 specialist drivers, based at the council’s Leycroft Road depot in Beaumont Leys, are on standby throughout the winter months.
They routinely grit 180 miles of primary routes – more than a third of the city’s entire road network – and a further 40 miles of routes during more severe snowfall.
With temperatures falling and predicted to reach below zero over the weekend, the team has already begun overnight gritting to tackle the latest winter cold spell. Work to treat the city’s road network is expected to continue throughout the bank holiday weekend.
Leicester City Council has stockpiled around 3,000 tonnes of rock salt, which works by lowering the freezing point of moisture on the road surface.
The first early morning traffic following any overnight ice or snow will crush the salt to form brine, which then gets worked into the snow and ice and helps dissolve it.
Gritting routes cover all local hospitals, fire stations and main police stations as well as many schools.
Leicester City Council’s highways network manager Rupert Bedder said: Our gritting teams are on standby every year from October to April as part of their winter gritting programme, so are ready to go out gritting at very short notice whenever overnight snow or ice is forecast.”
“We get regular detailed road gritting weather forecasts from specialist weather service providers, which we monitor closely in order to make a decision on if and when we need to go out.
“After a fairly mild start to the winter, much colder weather is forecast and our overnight gritting programme is now in action to help make our most important roads safer and free of ice for morning traffic.
“We also provide over 500 grit bins across the city for community use.”
“As always we’d advise people to take extra care when out and about in icy conditions, to wrap up warm, wear sensible footwear to reduce the risk of slips and falls and also to allow extra journey times to give yourself time to defrost or demist your vehicle before setting off.”
Details of winter road services are available from Leicester City Council's website here
Realtime traffic and transport updates are also available by following the city council’s area traffic control team at x.com/ATCLeicester