Would You Pay More To Cope When Snow Arrives?

It’s that time of year once again. A bit of snow arrives and the country grinds to a halt. It is not quite as bed as that but it can feel that way and certainly the headlines and comments of people show many people are thinking this is the case.

Are we as a country well prepared for snow and wintery weather? Yes and no. We can cope with frosty nights pretty well but when the weather gets a bit more serious the transport system does struggle to cope. Could the problem of snow causing chaos be fixed? Probably. With enough money and resources provided I have no doubt our local councils. railway services and airports would cope fine.

The real question is are you prepared to pay for it? If you want the ultimate service we would have to pay for a snow patrol(!) on every street corner to sit ready and available 24 hours a day throughout the winter. We could perhaps have a part time army of snow clearers paid a retainer to be on call at any time and that would be a cheaper option but we would still need to pay for the training and the equipment required to cope with bad weather.

How much extra would you be prepared to pay in taxes to have such a service? Most people would not want to pay anything at all and even the loudest critics of the council gritting services would not be eager to pay more council tax to make getting to work easier on a few days each year.

Ultimately, it all comes down to cost and if we want a better service we will have to pay for it one way or another. I think our gritter lorry crews deserve a bit of appreciation for what they are able to do. They work the most unsociable hours, working all through the night and all they get is criticism. There are 246,988 miles of paved roads in the UK according to Ordnance Survey.

We would need a huge fleet of gritters to get round every road just once in one night and they often have to grit the same roads repeatedly when severe weather occurs. If we assume a gritter lorry can travel at 30mph continuously that equates to 8,233 man hours to travel every road just once. I think it very unlikely they could average anything like that speed, especially when they are driving in very bad weather. To achieve that many miles and man hours in a night, assuming each driver does an eight hour shift, means we need around 1029 gritter lorries spread around the country and in reality we would probably need double that number since they have to go back to refill quite frequently.

I am sure they do the best they can and they put up with a lot of complaints that are unfairly targeted at them So, hats off to gritter lorry drivers everywhere for doing everything you can on limited resources and I wish a very Happy Christmas and a prosperous New Year to them and everyone else who visits this blog.