Winter balance sheet

Less salt on the roads than before

73 vehicles are available for 200 winter service drivers.

(Bild: Evelyn Hronek/Hronek Eveline)

Frosty times have arrived: The lower the temperatures, the quicker the winter road clearance service is on site. In Burgenland, the focus is on "preventive gritting".

All the important preparations have long since been made. Now 280 employees of the Construction Directorate are ready to ensure safety on 3700 kilometers of lanes in wintry conditions. 200 colleagues are employed as drivers of the emergency equipment, the rest work in the administration of the operations centers and workshops. The hubs are ten locations with a total of 15 road maintenance depots, strategically distributed across the entire country. "It is thanks to the further development of innovative technologies that the amount of gritting can be kept as low as necessary," explains Provincial Councillor Heinrich Dorner.

New technology makes the work more environmentally friendly
In Burgenland, the main focus is on "preventive spreading" using pre-wetted salt. The prerequisite for this is timely deployment planning. "All relevant data, such as weather forecasts and live measurements from the deployment trips, are brought together in a specially set up online portal and visualized on a diagnostic station. This enables us to take preventative measures and thus achieve an even better clearing performance when precipitation occurs," summarizes construction director Wolfgang Heckenast.

Dorner and Heckenast with Hans Wiedemann, Christian Leidl, Jürgen Glöckl and Roland Ackerler (from left) at the meeting.

(Bild: Büro Dorner)

In addition, the pre-wetted salt has a more efficient, faster de-icing effect and at the same time helps to achieve an even, homogeneous spreading pattern. This method is now standard. "A thin film of salt is applied before the snow falls. The advantage is that snow and ice bond less quickly with the road surface," says Dorner. The bottom line: road safety is becoming more environmentally friendly.

Ten days of snowfall last winter
3579 tons of salt were needed in winter 2023/20, with a storage capacity of 9200 tons. 7000 tons of salt is the average of the past five years. For grit, the figure is 900 tons; in the 2023/24 season, the requirement was 325 tons. In addition, there were 1.8 million liters of brine - 441 tons of which was salt. 52 days of operation were recorded by the winter service a year ago, ten of which were during snowfall.