estate gritting

caff

Hi, Living in collinswood and over the past few weeks I have noticed the foot paths are increasingly icy and slippy, the roads around the estate are pretty ridiculous too and I have seen cars sliding all over early morning and late at night. I have emailed the city council only to be told they only grit main roads and bus routes. Is the only option left then to try organise people to chip in and pay for it ourselves? I'm sure before march hits with ice over jan/feb someone is going to get badly injured slipping on the ice.

highdef

I think (but could be wrong) that the local authorities only grit the roadways of main roads and bus routes. Footpaths are generally not gritted AFAIK. I was working at the weekend and was in the city and although main roads were gritted, I didn't see any gritted footpaths. Any roads off main roads were not gritted and were ice rink like. A bit of common sense meant these roads could be driven on with no problems as long as speeds were kept very low. Unless you're estate is very hilly, it's unlikely the council will grit the area. Being an estate, traffic is expected to be driving slowly anyway. So driving slower should not be much of a hindrance to anyone, due to the very short distance needed to travel through an average sized estate. I live in a large private estate and the place was like an ice rink all weekend as it was not gritted. People just drove slowly and people walked carefully, mainly in the grass where it was not slippy. I'm sure some people lost it while driving around the roundabout but these would have been people not driving in a way that was suitable for the conditions at the time. As a result, there were little or no major problems. If the footpaths in your estate do not have grass verges, then if you walk as close as possible to the walls, you are almost sure of an ice/frost free walk. But sure thats just common sense.......white frosty ground = slippy. Normal grey ground = not slippy......as a general rule, of course!!! Black ice is a different issue.
However, if your estate involves steep inclines or declines, maybe your authority should grit the roads for the simple reason that cars don't do hills very well when the road is iced over.