Trunk Road Gritter Tracker | Hacker News Reader

Trunk Road Gritter Tracker

scotgov.maps.arcgis.com

90 pointshjkm68 comments

I'm amazed Scotland have a real time map with also how long ago a road was gritted - much respect to them.

And the Gritter names are hilarious - but sadly don't (in my mind) beat Doncaster's "Gritsy Bitsy Teeny Weeny Yellow Anti-Slip Machiney"

> I'm amazed Scotland have a real time map with also how long ago a road was gritted - much respect to them.

We've the same over in the Netherlands, even including temperature of the road surface - see https://www.rijkswaterstaatstrooit.nl/.

Here in Columbus, Ohio, we have a site called the Warrior Watch - https://warriorwatch.columbus.gov/ww It does a great job of showing when my street was last plowed and what it's priority is. We haven't had a lot of use for them this winter though.

One thing worth noting about that map is that it's only for major roads that appear to be the responsibility of Transport Scotland - local areas have their own snow clearing coverage e.g. Here is the map (sadly without automatic updates of gritter locations) for Fife where I live:

http://arcgisweb.fife.gov.uk/LocalViewEXT/Sites/publicWinter...

Mind you - the road where I live (which to be fair is rural and up a hill) was blocked for about a week the last time we had any serious snow and it was some local farmers with JCBs who actually cleared it.

This might be the first time I've seen someone else in Columbus on here!

Bookmarking this for use next year. Thanks.

I'm pleased to see they have a 'Mr Plow' in there, for the Simpsons reference!

> And the Gritter names are hilarious - but sadly don't (in my mind) beat Doncaster's "Gritsy Bitsy Teeny Weeny Yellow Anti-Slip Machiney"

There's so much scope here. I'm surprised that "Grits 'n' Giggles" hasn't been used, for example, and there are plenty of others:

- Grittystar Galactica

- Gritty End of the Stick

- Brad Grit

- Lord of the Flings

I should stop. Possibly I shouldn't have started.

I'm even more amazed, since it seems the damned things only come out about twice a year, at least in the North East!

I think the data is already tracked by many jurisdictions, it's just a matter of exposing it publicly.

For instance, here [1] is the status of state plow trucks in Iowa. They also have a road conditions map that I believe is overlayed on that map as well. Currently there isn't much weather going on though so I think it doesn't show anything.

[1] https://iowadot.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html...

Having never heard the terms "trunk road" or "gritter" it took me a little time to figure out what this was. Correct me if I'm wrong but "trunk road" appears to mean something like main road and "gritter" seems to mean plow and/or sanding truck.

That is correct - "trunk" as in body, so the main roads are trunk roads. The vans spread rock salt (which we call grit), hence called gritters! We Scots always get confused in the states when offered grits for breakfast .... Sadly it does mean you have to look after your car in winter, as that salt does wonders for chassis rust - you have to keep the car clean!

It's a salt/sand mix, since the sand (grit) provides extra grip.

If it's really cold (I assume this can happen in Scotland) it would just be grit.

(I'm not sure why "gritter" would be difficult to work out. "Grit" is a normal English word: bits of grit in the cabbage, 100 grit sandpaper.)

Mainly rock salt but doesnt work in extreme cold as the ice freezes with the rock salt in it. Ruins the vehicle chassis in the European country's which salt their roads but it keeps the Car industry going, not to mention pollutes water courses and crops.

And my favorite: in northern Scandinavia we try to be careful with salt because reindeer find it tasty...

UK rock salt grit comes from here: https://www.saltassociation.co.uk/education/make-salt/rock-s...

The UK's biggest rock salt mine is in Winsford in Cheshire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salt_in_Cheshire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winsford#Rock_salt

Additionally part of the mine is now used as a deep secure store for files from the health service.

"Main road" is actually considerably more general than trunk road in the Great Britain. The roads in GB are ordered hierarchically starting with motorways (although these have restrictions, ie. motorvehicles only), through trunk roads, primary, secondary, all the way down to byway.

It is important for navigation in GB. When you want to go somewhere you are supposed to use trunk roads to navigate to the first town/city on the trunk network beyond where you are going. The signs are coloured to indicate you are on the trunk network. Then as you approach your actual destination you will begin to see it signposted on the local non-trunk roads, at which point you leave the trunk roads.

This has been mostly forgotten in this age of GPS navigation, though, and many signs are in a poor state of repair or badly occluded by trees or shrubbery.

I'm from the UK and was unaware of this method (trunk road to town/city after destination).

Is there somewhere I can read about this in more detail?

Thanks!

It used to be documented in the usage section at the beginning of road atlases.

It's really just standard manual map based navigation. A dying art these days. I haven't seen many shrubbery related problems, we still have the best signage in the world (that I've seen) and it's perfectly possible to use sign based navigation without any GPS. You however may need to ask directions for the last couple of miles in rural areas.

Here is a list of primary destinations.

They are separated by region. So for example if you are in Cambridge (EAST region) you follow signs for EAST MIDLANDS. Once you are in that region, you will start seeing signs for the primary destinations in the region.

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...

> you are supposed to use trunk roads to navigate to the first town/city on the trunk network beyond where you are going

Yes, this is why it is very useful to know, when navigating out of a UK town / city, the next big town / city beyond your actual destination. If you get on the correct main road, you will usually find signs to your actual destination as you get closer to it. Knowing the main road numbers (A35, etc) as opposed to their names is also really useful as is is the numbers that will be used on the signposts.

So kinda like riding a metro train, where the lines are named after the final destination.

Yes, although the London underground uses a slightly different convention. The lines have names like Northern, Central etc, and most are linear. The line level signage at a station usually directs you to an eastbound / westbound / northbound or southbound platform. The direction and destination of a specific train is indicated by the furthest stop in each direction (which can vary depending on whether the line bifurcates, or a train isn't going all the way to the end).

For example, you'd think about going westbound on the Piccadilly line if you wanted to get to Heathrow from Central London

Eastbound, no? Since Heathrow is West of the center?

Since Heathrow is to the West of the centre, you go westbound to get to it, from the centre.

Sorry, yes, I'm an idiot.

I like "SNOWBEGONE KENOBI" and "READY SPREADY GO."

Also the word "gritter" is really funny to me.

In Michigan we have webcams on the front of our snow plows, in addition to their GPS location. This is useful for seeing road conditions throughout the state in places that don't have traffic cameras.

Just click the little icon that looks like a snowplow on this site. No plows out today, however...

https://michigan.gov/drive/

Surely if you're planning to drive on the road, you'd want the webcam to be behind the snow plow?

Lighting behind a truck is poor (no white lights on the back), and it gives an idea of how bad the roads are getting between snow plows. This is useful since plows often run notably slower than normal traffic can safely run for the conditions.

Toronto has the same thing for its snowplows, without the great names, sadly. They're all parked in their lots right now. We've been having unusually warm weather lately...

https://www.toronto.ca/services-payments/streets-parking-tra...

Same just down the road, but they're also service vehicles, so they're out and about regularly. http://hamilton.plowtracker.com/

Am I missing something - how do you see the names? When I click on one of the vehicles I see "Vehicle Location (PN61DYG)" and the name field is blank.

Zoom in until the names appear on the map, you don't have to select each vehicle - sadly they don't all have names.

Thank you!

Huh. Doing a search by name allows me to find some. But only the ones I've searched for by name _have_ a name. The rest have no name when I click on them. That's...weird.

I didn't know what gritters are, but this article makes it more clear and cites some of the funny names they have.

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/gritters-in-scotland-have...

G R I T A L L I C A!

David Plowie!

I live in a warm place so I am out of touch, but isn't that like a lot of gritters for how small Scotland is?

Hailing from Canada - does not look like nearly enough, probably because Scotland has relatively mild climate.

The road network is very dense and branched out. Also, it takes several snow plowing machines going in formation to clean major multi lane highway. Timing is also important- you want the road cleaned as soon as possible not several days later, especially if wet snow freezes into ice.

As I note in another comment - the gritters on that map are a small subset of all the gritters - those are just the ones that appear to be centrally controlled on 'major' routes.

We don't get huge amounts of snow (at least not very often) - but what we do get is a combination of snow and high winds - which can make it a nightmare to keep higher roads open.

Do you get icy-freeze-thaw conditions? Here in DC, we don't get a ton of snow, but when we do get winter weather, it's always just at freezing, so everything immediately gets thawed and re-frozen into ice. Most of my trips to Scotland have been summer, so only had snow up Glen Shee. The one time I visited in winter, it snowed a bit as I drove between Laggan and Dunkeld, but nothing dangerous.

"Glen Shee" - Scotland's version of the French Three Valleys! :-)

Not sure we get any kind of weather conditions (apart from wind and rain) with any predictability!

Ha! My parents are from Blairgowrie, so I've been through there often, but never to ski. Beautiful area any time of year. Apparently the Glen Shee road used to be a lot narrower, steeper, and twistier, and they sometimes had to reverse up one of the grades (reverse gear was lower than 1st in Dad's first car, a Hillman Imp, IIRC).

The twisty bit was called the Devil's Elbow [1], I remember going over it as a child before the modern road bypassed it. My parent's first car was a Hillman Imp too, I used to sleep on the shelf over the rear engine for part of trips up to Aberdeen.

I have had to fit chains to my car to get over the Cairnwell Pass, nothing passed me while I was fitting them and I could see people turning around lower down the hill, didn't see any gritters.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cairnwell_Pass

icy-freeze-thaw is perfect for ski resorts, but sadly it's rare that it happens. It rarely happens in the lowlands where most of Scotland's population lives. We do get frosts in the morning, but it's quite rare for sub-zero C temperatures thanks to our lovely Atlantic-influenced maritime climate. Never that cold in winter, never that warm (sadly) in summer.

Which can be much harder to keep clear. Here in Minnesota, USA we get both large amounts of snow and high winds. It's not unusual to have whiteout blizzard conditions and MNDot (Department of Transportation) warning against any travel in some parts of the state..

They can clear a road only to have the wind cover it with snow again an hour later.

I live on top of a hill so I'm well acquainted with what happens when winds gust to 40mph after Mother Nature has dumped 6" of snow on us. Wind-packed snowdrifts suck ass!

The trunk road network is 2179 miles (3506km) long and there's ~120 gritters deployed.

Doesn't seem like an unreasonable amount to me.

2179/120 means each one has to cover about 18 miles. Assuming they average 36 mph, assuming each trunk road is 2 lanes in both directions (assuming one pass per lane and not including time to clean up the shoulder/median), and assuming they spend 50% of their time gritting/plowing new roads rather than filling up/changing drivers/driving on plowed roads to get to or from their target road, that's one pass every four hours. Seems quite reasonable (if a bit undersized) to me as a Michigander.

We're having unseasonably warm weather here - it's 45 and sunny instead of a typical 25 and overcast - so all the snow has melted in Southwest Michigan and our state plow tracking map is basically blank today:

https://mdotjboss.state.mi.us/MiDrive/map

We have about 800 snowplows to cover 12,000 miles of state/trunk roads (15 miles per vehicle). It requires about 2,000 operators to keep those 800 plow trucks running 24x7 when it's really snowing.

> assuming each trunk road is 2 lanes in both directions

At a rough guess, about half of the roads have 2 lanes in each direction, and the rest one lane in each direction.

That should improve your estimate.

My Dad used to be a council civil engineer - every year he took turns deciding when to send the gritters out. There’s quite an art to deciding on a plan based on the road dew points, the precipitation forecast and the temperature. Precipitation washes the salt off - so that mileage often has to be covered multiple times over.

He used to get very nerdy over Christmas checking the road network data website :)

Remember most of these "major" routes are single track A road at best, apart from our small motorway network. Once you are north of the central belt, where Glasgow and Edinburgh are, your main road can be anything but. This means they don't cover as much ground as you might expect, hence we do need quite a few of them. https://trafficscotland.org/livetrafficcameras/

Single Track means there is just one vehicle width shared both directions, if you meet someone coming the opposite way too bad, the next size up is Single Track with Passing Places (at intervals the road is wide enough for vehicles to pass in opposite directions). Not many Single Track A roads left in Britain, the A roads have mostly been upgraded even in Scotland. You're likely thinking of single Carriageway, which means there's only one road surface but it has separate lanes in each direction. Lots of those.

I first misread this as "Truck road glitter tracker". At first I was disappointed, but then noticed the names of the gritting trucks and my faith in humanity was restored :)

Does anyone know what underlying technologies they are using? Anything opensource server or client side? What types of hardware do they use in the vehicles to send the GPS info?

Salt, rocks and lots of diesel.

ESRI's ArcGIS server. No, not open source.

I've worked on a couple. (https://ara.grittertracker.co.uk and https://manchester.grittertracker.co.uk for example).

These use an off the shelf telematics system from webfleet or masternaut (it's gps for location, vehicle data connection for odometer and speed etc and 3g card for data signal) that send data back to the telematics database.

There's the a public API to call to get most recent position or all route. We used the public API to grab positions and display on a map.

Took reading the comments to figure out what a gritter is. (Here in the States.)

Here we'd call them sanders or salters.

It was an even bet for me between that and maintenance of oiled gravel roads. It's basically a lower cost version of asphalt. Every few years, they sprinkle some gravel, and spray with heavy oil. The odor is horrible, and vehicles get dirty.

Typically we refer to them as 'plows' or 'snowplows' in the US midwest regardless of what they're actually doing—they often (but not always) have a large plow on the front, and a salt/sand spreader on the back, or in some cases a sprayer that shoots out fine mist that gets your car all grimy and nasty for the next day or two.

The mist is called "brine", at least here in DC metro. It's usually applied before a winter weather event. Once the snow is down, we apply a normal salt/sand mix.

In the Midwest (Chicago) I've usually heard them referred to as just "snowplows" or "plows", which also carried salt and spread it behind them as they plowed.

Incidentally, Chicago also has a a real time plow tracker: https://www.chicago.gov/city/en/depts/streets/supp_info/plow...

Neat! I love the names too.

Is it using the cell network out of interest, or..?

Yeah, i believe it’s done via the Vodafone network.

Cell coverage is something like 95% of land and 99.something% of population.

"David Plowie" got me

ICE DESTROYER!

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