Tired of the daily commute, how about this distraction, on your way home, see if you can find any evidence, that the road your travelling has been gritted, it seems that KCC’s bosses have introduced “stealth gritters” in order too entertain and challenge the travelling public .
Anyway me and my colleagues had a go this afternoon and found it quite tricky to “spot the gritter” despite thinking it would be easy on one of the countries major routes the A2 & M2 where the heaviest snow falls were late this afternoon.
So where is Kent Highways spending its money, yes we know they’ve spent a fortune on advertising on telly and local newspapers during the past year but surely there must be some money for salt?
Anyhow if you can spot a gritter in the above picture well done, we did eventually spot one between Minster and St Nicks roundabout but since this one was painted yellow with flashing amber lights it didn’t really count.
Tony its not supprising that you failed to find a KCC gritter on the M2 and A2 since The Highways Agency are responsible for motorways and trunk roads.
ReplyDeleteBut that apart, spotting a KCC gritter is also quite difficult. There seem to be 66 of them but only 54 are in use with the others on stand by. With 4500 miles of roads in the county KCC only ever plan to salt 30%. You can do the sums per gritter. I cant find out though whether road miles are counted as one or on a lane basis.
A lot of this info can be found from a link on the first page of the new look KCC web site. So far £277,000 of our money has been spent on this web site revamp. And if you can make the 'salting map of kent' work good luck. They must have spent thousands on this alone. Its a bit like the KCC elections results map that was all over the place.
Son reported no gritting at all going on with an inch of snow already on road between Cliffsend and Pfizers earlier this evening; isn't that a major route out of Thanet?
ReplyDeleteSo let's spend millions we haven't got getting a fleet of gritters and thousands of tons of salt for next year. And then watch them stay in the garage!
ReplyDeleteBetter that the great british motorists join the IAM and learn how to drive on a little bit of snow and ice!
Ah but it's so much easier to blame the councils and everyone else than acknowledge our own failings that we can't drive properly in slightly adverse conditions!
Anon 01.08, yes KCC will have to budget for more bad weather in the future. But you cant say its money they dont have. This is the council that claims to support business in Kent. KCC can find money for project like Kent Film Office and Kent TV that support very specific parts of the economy. They have also just spent £277,000 on changing their web site with more cash to follow this. The list goes on - Kent Health Watch as £600 per call received, £17,000,000 on reorganising the county wide Highways depots down to 3 etc. I wont go into Icelandic Banks loss which they claimed at the time will not affect services. The poor state of the roads right know is having a bad effect on the economy of Kent as a whole and no doubt some of KCC's rate payers are also loosing money. KCC need to get back to basic services rather than the expansionist plan they seem to have.
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