Road maintenance units are ready for the winter, 760 people will ensure that road are passable1/11/2017|Press releasesThe falling autumn temperatures are a strong reminder for road maintenance units that their everyday hassle will soon start. This year more than 760 RSD staff will take care of the motorways and category 1 roads. The individual administration and maintenance departments can, with average precipitation, remove snow from the most important roads in the country within two hours by the latest. A total of 591 drivers and 170 controllers have been assigned to the working shifts. If there is heavy snowfall, RSD must provide its own workers who will ensure the passability of more than 900 km of motorways across the Czech Republic. Maintenance is carried out by designated motorway maintenance centres. One centre covers about 50 km of the motorway. The remaining motorway sections (about 350 km) and category 1 roads are maintained by contractors based on agreement made with RSD. Besides the staff of each maintenance centre, this challenging job requires the use of specialised equipment every year. RSD has a total of 181 gravel spreaders available. A total of 43 universal vehicles with different technical equipment are also prepared – if there has been heavy snowfall, for example, large snow ploughs, able to handle even the largest drifts, are engaged. There are almost 33,000 tons of salt and salt solutions in the storage rooms of the maintenance centres. 48 gravel spreaders are prepared for loading the salt into the graders. RSD also has a service centre in each maintenance centre for the production and distribution of brine; a solution of water and sodium chloride and a solution of water and calcium chloride. The stock of bulk materials to be spread is calculated for an average winter. Should there be particularly harsh weather, it is still possible to use emergency reserves. An important element of the winter road maintenance system are the control centres. The controllers in these centres have, in most cases, on-line images from surveillance cameras, current meteorological data as well as data from sensors located directly on the roads. The employees of these centres also evaluate the short, medium-term and line forecasts of the Czech Hydrometeorological Institute for each road section. The rain radar is part of the system. As required by Czech legislation, motorways and category I roads have the highest priority in ensuring passability. The time since the detection of the defect until the time the first machines leave the yard must not be less than 30 minutes in the winter. Periods for mitigating the effects of the defects and obstructions are also defined for the time after the machines have left the centres: • within 2 hours for motorways • within 3 hours for category 1 roads The organisational, material, technical and technological principles of ensuring passability are governed by the Roads Act No. 13/1997 Coll., as later amended, and its implementing decree No. 104/1997 Coll., as later amended. Winter maintenance mitigates, in the defined order of preference, defects arising from bad weather and road passability conditions during the winter. You can find information on the winter equipment, roads and motorways passability as well as information on winter maintenance on motorways and category I roads on the www.dopravniinfo.cz portal.