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Road Engineering for Snow free UK in Highland Scotland!


skifreak

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Posted
  • Location: Highland Scotland
  • Location: Highland Scotland

I have been wondering if road engineers have been brainwashed by AGW hysteria and now believe the snow-free UK hype of the media!

Last year Transerv won the maintenance contract for the A9 and Trunk Roads west of it from BEAR Scotland. This summer Transerv has been busy, they seem to love solid armco. They've replaced long streaches of safety fencing that BEAR Scotland put in with Armco barriers, now they've gone up and down the A9 putting in sections of Armco around larger road signs and at the bottom of uphill embankments. In countless locations in Strathspey they have put in Armco in areas notorious for heavy drifting just inches from the carriageway and armco makes very effective snow fences.

It seems this has been done with no thought to winter consequences whatsoever, in some cases armco has been put between snowpoles and the carriageway !! There are streaches esp close to the Carrbridge turn-off where the road was raised on a manmade ridge to avoid drifting and they've stuck armco on bits of it!! There and uptowards the Slochd there are sections so close to the road it will probably only take minutes for a drift to form in a squally shower and probably not 15mins to block the road and it only takes one blockage however short for things to get stuck. I can see this causing chaos even in some recent winters, let alone if we get a fairly hard one. In some cases there isn't any space for ploughs to push snow off the carriageway, Transerves shiny new armco's crumple zone ends are going to end up being shoved over by the wave of snow from the ploughs! Expensive cock up me thinks! :cray:

From opening of the final section of the current A9 to Aviemore, through the 80s and 90s the A9 was never closed due to snow between Inverness and Aviemore, the Highland Council would throw whatever it took to keep the A9 open, even if it was belting it down and visibility down to 10ft at the Slochd. BEAR seemed to park their snowploughs when it started snowing and now transerv have gone one better and engineered in roadblocks in the making.

Does the powers that be actually realise it STILL SNOWS IN THIS COUNTRY???

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Posted
  • Location: Sheffield South Yorkshire 160M Powering the Sheffield Shield
  • Weather Preferences: Any Extreme
  • Location: Sheffield South Yorkshire 160M Powering the Sheffield Shield

Don't worry all the Snow will turn to rain with Global warming.

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Posted
  • Location: Caterham-on-the-hill, Surrey, 190m asl (home), Heathrow (work)
  • Location: Caterham-on-the-hill, Surrey, 190m asl (home), Heathrow (work)

What's Armco and BEAR Scotland please?

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Posted
  • Location: Crossgates, Leeds. 76m ASL
  • Weather Preferences: Temperatures ≤25ºC ≥10ºC.
  • Location: Crossgates, Leeds. 76m ASL

Is it this? http://www.ecyltd.co.uk/guardrail.htm

Wouldn't like to find one of them burried in a snowdrift :cray:

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Posted
  • Location: Brynmawr 1300ft asl
  • Weather Preferences: sun and snow
  • Location: Brynmawr 1300ft asl

You just couldn't make it up could you! A costly mistake that us the taxpayer again has to fork out for. Grrr

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Posted
  • Location: Steeton, W Yorks, 270m ASL
  • Location: Steeton, W Yorks, 270m ASL
You just couldn't make it up could you! A costly mistake that us the taxpayer again has to fork out for. Grrr

What say we don't prejudge that one. SkiFreak may or may not have a point, however, what he might overlook is that the total cost of road stretches beyond inconvenience for skiers wanting to make it to Aviemore as and when it snows. If Armco saves lives, even at the price of an occasional snowdrift (and by the way, Armco on the M62 never presented a significant assistance to snowdrift where there wasn't in any case going to be a serious problem), then fair enough. Roads do not tend to block because a drift forms on its own; the biggest problem has always been cars and lorries getting stuck on an incline, so allowing snow to build up and preventing ploughs getting through.

By the way Simon, I very much doubt that 'you the taxpayer (in Wales)' will be making much of a contribution to roads in Scotland. Pretty sure that trunk maintenance falls under part of the devolved powers.

Edited by Stratos Ferric
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Posted
  • Location: Putney, SW London. A miserable 14m asl....but nevertheless the lucky recipient of c 20cm of snow in 12 hours 1-2 Feb 2009!
  • Location: Putney, SW London. A miserable 14m asl....but nevertheless the lucky recipient of c 20cm of snow in 12 hours 1-2 Feb 2009!
By the way Simon, I very much doubt that 'you the taxpayer (in Wales)' will be making much of a contribution to roads in Scotland. Pretty sure that trunk maintenance falls under part of the devolved powers.

It may well do, but I thought that although Scotland has many devolved powers that enable it to spend money, it has no tax-raising powers of its own. Hence the grumps from south of the border about the generous benefits (such as free university education) voted to themselves by Scots but paid for disproportionately by the wealthier sassenachs (because of the grants that move money from richer to poorer areas of the UK). Mind you, Wales benefits also from this net inflow of money, so you're probably right that Simon effectively doesn't pay Scottish bills - but I certainly do! But then the Scots would say that I wouldn't need to if they'd been able to keep the North Sea oil & gas revenues.....

Back to the barriers: I fully agree with your point, SF, about looking at the broader, all-year situation, not just the snowy-winter scenario.

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Posted
  • Location: Steeton, W Yorks, 270m ASL
  • Location: Steeton, W Yorks, 270m ASL
It may well do, but I thought that although Scotland has many devolved powers that enable it to spend money, it has no tax-raising powers of its own. Hence the grumps from south of the border about the generous benefits (such as free university education) voted to themselves by Scots but paid for disproportionately by the wealthier sassenachs (because of the grants that move money from richer to poorer areas of the UK). Mind you, Wales benefits also from this net inflow of money, so you're probably right that Simon effectively doesn't pay Scottish bills - but I certainly do! But then the Scots would say that I wouldn't need to if they'd been able to keep the North Sea oil & gas revenues.....

Back to the barriers: I fully agree with your point, SF, about looking at the broader, all-year situation, not just the snowy-winter scenario.

Osm: my point was indeed absolutely re the notion of a welshman complaining about subsidies to Scotland. Well spotted.

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Posted
  • Location: Troon, South Ayrshire
  • Location: Troon, South Ayrshire
It may well do, but I thought that although Scotland has many devolved powers that enable it to spend money, it has no tax-raising powers of its own. Hence the grumps from south of the border about the generous benefits (such as free university education) voted to themselves by Scots but paid for disproportionately by the wealthier sassenachs (because of the grants that move money from richer to poorer areas of the UK). Mind you, Wales benefits also from this net inflow of money, so you're probably right that Simon effectively doesn't pay Scottish bills - but I certainly do! But then the Scots would say that I wouldn't need to if they'd been able to keep the North Sea oil & gas revenues.....

Back to the barriers: I fully agree with your point, SF, about looking at the broader, all-year situation, not just the snowy-winter scenario.

New legislation has come into effect requiring vehicle safety fence for anything over a certain size (I think its over 100mm) unless its passively safe, ie you hit it and it won't fall on you. Either that or you reduce the speed limit.

This has caused a major headache amongst all Councils thus the "cheap" barrier option appearing. The number of days out of a year when snow substaintially affects a road is relatively low and I don't think a barrier will make that much difference.

On the matter of subsidies, oil etc thats a sore one for all of us but always remember we're still Great Britain and the government will always tax us no matter what. Just remember one thing there's a fair chance people down South will need our new "oil", WATER and thats the one thing we've got lots of.

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Posted
  • Location: Evesham, Worcs, Albion
  • Location: Evesham, Worcs, Albion

Regardless of the potential to save the lives of speeding and careless driver in summer, isn't putting such barriers up on the inside of snow poles the height of incompetence? I bet a sassunach was involved here - probably don't even know what those poles are (thinks they're trendy lamposts I expect). After all they don;t have them in Edinburgh ..... :lol:

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