W I N T E R R O A D M A I N T E N A N C E
Results of Winter
Road Maintenance
Operations
Research
The University of Alberta’s Integrated Road
Research Facility and the City of Edmonton
have used direct measurements of road surfaces
in winter conditions to clarify some slippery
questions related to winter road maintenance
By Dr. Ali Bayat, Professor, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University
of Alberta; Director, Integrated Road Research Facility
Winter driving conditions pose
obvious challenges for road
users, especially in terms of
safety. In Alberta, both Calgary and
Edmonton have adopted Vision Zero,
with the goal of eliminating all traffic
fatalities. The high social cost associ-ated
with collisions in general makes
this a very desirable outcome. However,
achieving Vision Zero – or simply reduc-ing
collision rates in general – is par-ticularly
challenging considering win-ter
road conditions in Alberta. More
accidents generally occur in the win-ter
months, and this holds for both
property damage only (PDO) collisions
and collisions involving injuries and/
or fatalities.
It’s obvious that winter driving con-ditions,
especially slippery or icy road-ways,
increase the likelihood of traffic
collisions. Correspondingly, consider-able
resources are put into winter road
maintenance. For instance, Calgary
reported a budget of $40.4 million for
snow and ice control in 2019, and a
large portion of municipal budgets goes
towards winter road maintenance in
other municipalities. This includes oper-ations
such as de-icing, plowing and/or
sanding. Municipalities also have vary-ing
guidelines for the timing and stan-dards
of such maintenance, depending
on factors such as accumulation and
type of road (arterial or collector).
In practice, municipal winter road
maintenance strategies tend to be based
on rules of thumb or visual indications
of conditions. For instance, sand may
be applied by a sanding truck when ice
is observed by the operator on the road
surface. This means that in practice,
road maintenance operations can be
affected by factors including visibility
and operator experience. There is an
element of guesswork always present in
the minute-by-minute decisions made
regarding the treatment of the road
surface. The goal, however, for all win-ter
maintenance activities is to increase
the amount of friction between the
tire and the driving surface (whether
it is bare asphalt, ice, fresh snow or
packed snow).
Given the number of variables that
exist – for instance, prevailing snow
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