However should we expect all of our roads to be gritted?
As it turns out the Council do provide some information about this. In particular they have a Winter Service Policy that goes into a reasonable level of detail about what they aim to do.
From that I've learned that all streets are broken down into three priorities:
Priority 1
- main distributor roads
- secondary distributor roads
- main bus routes
- transport interchanges
- roads leading to hospitals, ambulances and fire stations
- routes linking main and secondary distributor roads
- routes through industrial estates and housing hubs
- all remaining residential roads
Pavements are broken down into similar groups:
Priority 1
- main shopping areas such as Eltham, Woolwich and Greenwich Town Centres
- transport interchanges i.e. around rail stations
- local shopping areas
- footbridges
- routes through housing estates
- hills
- around schools
- all remaining footways
Floyd Road is, perhaps somewhat surprisingly, a Priority 2 road and the pavement around the station should be a Priority 1 area.
Neither have been gritted.
So three full days after the snow begins to fall Greenwich Council have failed to grit their Priority 2 roads and their Priority 1 pavements.
Is that reasonable?
I am quite genuinely not sure. On the one hand this has been truly exceptional weather and buses along main roads now seem to be fine. On the other we have had three days and what sort of priority is "priority 2" if it's not done after all that time?
And all of this must come with a warning that in order for gritting to be effective you need a certain level of movement over it. So perhaps my street has actually been gritted but hasn't seen enough vehicles to get it to work.
Anyway check your street out and let's see if we can gain some measure as to how the Council is doing when measured against it's own priorities.
I'm very tempted to go out and buy a shovel, if I already had one I'd have been out there by now trying to make a bit of a difference around me.
4 comments:
Littleheath has been gritted on the main carriageway (quite unsurprisingly as it is a major bus route). The pavements however have not. This is quite disgraceful as the snow has compacted into a sort of 'permafrost' layer of extremely solid ice. Going down the hill towards the bus stops is practically impossible without slipping over, and it is only by virtue of my walking stick giving me extra balance that I've not fallen over several times.
Oh yes, my street hasn't been gritted either - none of the roads off Littleheath have.
I thought it an unreasonable amount of time and emailed the council on Wednesday after i landed flat on my bum on the Heights. Charlton is very hilly and coming down either Charlton Lane or through the Heights to get to the station was very tricky. I did get a phone call back... on Friday and asked if i wanted to take my complaint further but i didnt see the point.
Floyd Road actually has it's pavements gritted on Thursday or Friday. From what I understand that does make it somewhat of a rarity with many other streets getting no attention at all.
Well done on complaining to the Council Brenda. Did it actually get those streets gritted?
No because they called me on Friday when it had pretty much washed away that morning. They have followed up with an email asking me to let them know if the problem persists! We shall see if it snows again.
Post a Comment