The Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE) North East is urging the Government and local authorities to learn from the problems the recent snow and ice have brought to transport infrastructure.
“As with the Cumbria Floods, the latest Big Freeze has again served to highlight the fragility of our critical infrastructure and energy supplies,” said Stephen Larkin, regional director, ICE North East.
“In February 2009, the reasons given for not having enough salt to deal with the snow and ice centred on such conditions being too infrequent to be worth the financial outlay. The argument remains over whether it is worth spending huge amounts of money to deal with an event that is so unusual, or is this something that we can expect more of in the future as a result of climate change?
This year, things were worse than last year and again we weren’t prepared, despite the Government establishing Salt Cell, a body to respond to last February’s problems.
“Transport infrastructure is far too valuable to the North East economy to simply shrug our shoulders and say we can’t afford to be prepared. This record-breaking cold snap has to be a wake-up call. In our region, we have been at the mercy of the weather since the middle of December when the snow started to fall.
“What price a well-stocked salt depot when compared to the cost to the economy of not being prepared: lost work days, High Street retailers losing footfall and other such negatives brought about by impassable roads? Surely it is better to have the salt standing in depots waiting to be used than to not have enough to make our roads safe when needed.
“The icy conditions have also highlighted another problem, caused by patchwork repairs to roads. A number of major roads in the North East have already crumbled in places because of the snow working its way into existing cracks, then expanding as it freezes. Had these roads been maintained in a way which left them in better condition in the first place, then these extreme conditions would not have had such an effect, but sadly over the last 10 years England has seen a 52% increase in the number of visual road defects, such as cracking, potholes and patching.
“Prevention has to be better than cure in the future. Now that the roads are clear again, we can expect them to soon be blocked as repair work takes place where the freeze has done its structural damage. We can but hope that it will not be more patching.
“As well as being in a position to treat the main roads, it is worth looking at how rural areas and remote communities, such as farmers, can be helped. We should consider the feasibility of providing these areas with their own supplies of salt so that they can help themselves.
“Lessons surely can and should be learned. This type of weather may become a more frequent occurrence due to climate change. We may even see worse to come this year if the recent trend for February’s bad weather to overshadow that in January continues.
“It may be true that this doesn’t happen very often, but when it does, we must be ready.”