Looking after a challenging road network at Carmarthenshire County Council

With a diverse and challenging road network, combined with the unpredictable weather conditions coming from the coastline, Carmarthenshire County Council need to be able to quickly adapt its gritting routes to ensure its roads are treated correctly throughout the winter season.

To ensure the county’s road network is kept safe and clear throughout the winter, we worked with Econ to install our vehicle navigation and automated salt spreading systems across Carmarthenshire’s fleet of Econ gritters in 2018. The navigation systems guide the vehicle operator round the route while automatically spreading salt.

The vehicle navigation and automated salt spreading functions have brought the council huge benefits in terms of driver safety – drivers are now less stressed and safer as they can concentrate solely on driving their routes, without having to worry about facilitating salt spreading.

Both systems are integrated with our Map-a-Route software, which Carmarthenshire’s winter maintenance team are using to create and edit the county’s multiple gritting routes to account for any changes in road or weather conditions. Once the team have edited a route, these are uploaded straight into the gritter.

As each route is mapped within the Map-a-Route system, a range of statistics are calculated, including total distance, estimated mileage and how long the route will take to complete.

As spread rates are programmed along the routes, they can be tweaked to determine the amount of salt used, which lets the team know if the driver will need to refill during the route or not. These statistics can be used to provide a clear picture on the overall usage of salt stocks throughout the winter season, and by varying the spread rate the council can reduce surface erosion and the cost of repairs caused by over salting.

This article first appeared in Econ’s March 2020 newsletter which can be viewed here