And the Gritter names are hilarious - but sadly don't (in my mind) beat Doncaster's "Gritsy Bitsy Teeny Weeny Yellow Anti-Slip Machiney"
We've the same over in the Netherlands, even including temperature of the road surface - see https://www.rijkswaterstaatstrooit.nl/.
There's so much scope here. I'm surprised that "Grits 'n' Giggles" hasn't been used, for example, and there are plenty of others:
- Grittystar Galactica
- Gritty End of the Stick
- Brad Grit
- Lord of the Flings
I should stop. Possibly I shouldn't have started.
For instance, here [1] is the status of state plow trucks in Iowa. They also have a road conditions map that I believe is overlayed on that map as well. Currently there isn't much weather going on though so I think it doesn't show anything.
[1] https://iowadot.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html...
If it's really cold (I assume this can happen in Scotland) it would just be grit.
(I'm not sure why "gritter" would be difficult to work out. "Grit" is a normal English word: bits of grit in the cabbage, 100 grit sandpaper.)
It is important for navigation in GB. When you want to go somewhere you are supposed to use trunk roads to navigate to the first town/city on the trunk network beyond where you are going. The signs are coloured to indicate you are on the trunk network. Then as you approach your actual destination you will begin to see it signposted on the local non-trunk roads, at which point you leave the trunk roads.
This has been mostly forgotten in this age of GPS navigation, though, and many signs are in a poor state of repair or badly occluded by trees or shrubbery.
Yes, this is why it is very useful to know, when navigating out of a UK town / city, the next big town / city beyond your actual destination. If you get on the correct main road, you will usually find signs to your actual destination as you get closer to it. Knowing the main road numbers (A35, etc) as opposed to their names is also really useful as is is the numbers that will be used on the signposts.
Is there somewhere I can read about this in more detail?
Thanks!
Also the word "gritter" is really funny to me.
Just click the little icon that looks like a snowplow on this site. No plows out today, however...
https://www.toronto.ca/services-payments/streets-parking-tra...
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/gritters-in-scotland-have...
The road network is very dense and branched out. Also, it takes several snow plowing machines going in formation to clean major multi lane highway. Timing is also important- you want the road cleaned as soon as possible not several days later, especially if wet snow freezes into ice.
Doesn't seem like an unreasonable amount to me.
We're having unseasonably warm weather here - it's 45 and sunny instead of a typical 25 and overcast - so all the snow has melted in Southwest Michigan and our state plow tracking map is basically blank today:
https://mdotjboss.state.mi.us/MiDrive/map
We have about 800 snowplows to cover 12,000 miles of state/trunk roads (15 miles per vehicle). It requires about 2,000 operators to keep those 800 plow trucks running 24x7 when it's really snowing.
He used to get very nerdy over Christmas checking the road network data website :)
We don't get huge amounts of snow (at least not very often) - but what we do get is a combination of snow and high winds - which can make it a nightmare to keep higher roads open.
They can clear a road only to have the wind cover it with snow again an hour later.
I live on top of a hill so I'm well acquainted with what happens when winds gust to 40mph after Mother Nature has dumped 6" of snow on us. Wind-packed snowdrifts suck ass!
These use an off the shelf telematics system from webfleet or masternaut (it's gps for location, vehicle data connection for odometer and speed etc and 3g card for data signal) that send data back to the telematics database.
There's the a public API to call to get most recent position or all route. We used the public API to grab positions and display on a map.
Incidentally, Chicago also has a a real time plow tracker: https://www.chicago.gov/city/en/depts/streets/supp_info/plow...
It was an even bet for me between that and maintenance of oiled gravel roads. It's basically a lower cost version of asphalt. Every few years, they sprinkle some gravel, and spray with heavy oil. The odor is horrible, and vehicles get dirty.
Is it using the cell network out of interest, or..?
Cell coverage is something like 95% of land and 99.something% of population.
