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Trunk Road Gritter Tracker
- Xophmeister 7y agoI 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 :)
- BuildTheRobots 7y agoI'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"
- Denvercoder9 7y ago> 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/ https://www.rijkswaterstaatstrooit.nl/.
- nathanm412 7y agoHere in Columbus, Ohio, we have a site called the Warrior Watch - https://warriorwatch.columbus.gov/ww 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.
- arethuza 7y agoOne 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/publicWinterGrittting/ 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.
- kiddico 7y agoThis might be the first time I've seen someone else in Columbus on here! Bookmarking this for use next year. Thanks.
- joosters 7y agoI'm pleased to see they have a 'Mr Plow' in there, for the Simpsons reference!
- bartread 7y ago> 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.
- GordonS 7y agoI'm even more amazed, since it seems the damned things only come out about twice a year, at least in the North East!
- war1025 7y agoI 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?id=3d5bc4ec8c474870a19c7e8f44b39c9c https://iowadot.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html...
- michelpp 7y agoG R I T A L L I C A!
- VMG 7y agoDavid Plowie!
- VectorLock 7y agoI like "SNOWBEGONE KENOBI" and "READY SPREADY GO." Also the word "gritter" is really funny to me.
- anfractuosity 7y agoNeat! I love the names too. Is it using the cell network out of interest, or..?
- CraigJPerry 7y agoYeah, i believe it’s done via the Vodafone network. Cell coverage is something like 95% of land and 99.something% of population.
- kingpiss 7y agoI 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?
- mynegation 7y agoHailing 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.
- arethuza 7y agoAs 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.
- alistairSH 7y agoDo 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.
- arethuza 7y ago"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!
- alistairSH 7y ago
- ejo4041 7y agoDoes 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?
- jeffrallen 7y agoSalt, rocks and lots of diesel.
- francisofascii 7y agoESRI's ArcGIS server. No, not open source.
- gbanfill 7y agoI've worked on a couple. (https://ara.grittertracker.co.uk https://ara.grittertracker.co.uk and https://manchester.grittertracker.co.uk 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.
- starkd 7y agoTook reading the comments to figure out what a gritter is. (Here in the States.)
- mirimir 7y agoHere 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.
- geerlingguy 7y agoTypically 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.
- alistairSH 7y agoThe 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.
- nkrisc 7y agoIn 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/plowtracker.html https://www.chicago.gov/city/en/depts/streets/supp_info/plow...
- multiplegeorges 7y agoToronto 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-transportation/road-maintenance/winter-maintenance/plowto/ https://www.toronto.ca/services-payments/streets-parking-tra...
- jvm_ 7y agoSame just down the road, but they're also service vehicles, so they're out and about regularly. http://hamilton.plowtracker.com/ http://hamilton.plowtracker.com/
- driverdan 7y agoHaving 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.
- squigg 7y agoThat 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!
- Symbiote 7y agoIt'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.)
- piinthesky 7y agoMainly 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.
- alkonaut 7y agoAnd my favorite: in northern Scandinavia we try to be careful with salt because reindeer find it tasty...
- buro9 7y agoUK rock salt grit comes from here: https://www.saltassociation.co.uk/education/make-salt/rock-salt-production/ 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/Salt_in_Cheshire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winsford#Rock_salt 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.
- jeffrallen 7y agoICE DESTROYER!
- AndrewDucker 7y agoAm 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.
- squigg 7y agoZoom in until the names appear on the map, you don't have to select each vehicle - sadly they don't all have names.
- AndrewDucker 7y agoThank you!
- AndrewDucker 7y agoHuh. 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.
- ejdyksen 7y agoIn 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/ https://michigan.gov/drive/
- cheesysam 7y agoSurely if you're planning to drive on the road, you'd want the webcam to be behind the snow plow?
- froindt 7y agoLighting 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.
- birdyrooster 7y ago"David Plowie" got me
- TaurenHunter 7y agoI 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-names-like-gritty-gritty-bang-bang-and-you-can-track-them-on-a-map-a3741576.html https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/gritters-in-scotland-have...