Road gritting
Because Liverpool is close to the sea it has a relatively mild climate. We are rarely affected by the severe frosts and snowfall that can occur in other parts of the U.K. However, road temperatures sometimes fall below zero during the 'winter' period (mid-November - late March) causing icy patches on the highway. This can be dangerous so it is important that we have an effective Winter Maintenance Service to treat icy roads and avoid accidents.
Gritting
When road frosts are forecast we have a team of 8 grit spreaders who aim to treat roads across the city before ice forms. There is 24 hour cover from mid-November to late March to enable us to respond to changes in weather conditions immediately.
We treat the busiest roads first as this is where the risk of accidents is greatest but over 400kms of roads are treated in total each time the gritters are called out. This is more than 30% of Liverpool's road network which is above the national average for this type of maintenance.
Every year we review our policies on winter maintenance to see if we can make any improvements to the service. We also reassess the list of roads to be gritted.
A list of gritting routes can be found on the Enterprise-Liverpool website.
Salt bins
There are some sites across the city that we are not able treat for practical or economical reasons. In these locations we have provided salt bins at the side of the road. We encourage residents to use this salt to help deal with icy spots.
The salt bins are regularly re-filled so that there is always enough to treat the road if ice starts to form.