With the snow in full swing, South Lanarkshire residents can now track the county’s gritters on a map.
Gritter Thunberg, Lewis Caploughdi, Spready Mercury and friends are on the live map along with the others still waiting to be named.
Trackers on the vehicles send their location to a satellite which is then plotted on the council’s mapping system, giving you real-time information about where the gritters are.
You can also see where they have been in the last 12 hours, with different colours picking out when they were there.
The precautionary gritting routes are marked on the map so you can see when they have started work on other routes.
And, if you click on a gritter icon you will get specific vehicle information.
Chair of South Lanarkshire Council’s Community and Enterprise Resources Committee, Councillor John Anderson, said: “It’s great news that local people will now be able to see, in real time, the routes our vehicles are taking when out gritting our roads.
“It will hopefully help everyone realise what a huge task it is to cover an area the size of South Lanarkshire and the fantastic job our employees do to keep everyone safe.”
Chair of South Lanarkshire Council’s Roads Safety Forum, Councillor Julia Marrs, added: “I am sure the young people who were successful in our hugely popular ‘name the gritter’ competition will be delighted to go on and track the vehicle they named.
“As well as being a bit of fun for them, I am sure their parents will be interested in just how hard the drivers work in such extreme conditions and the largely unseen work often done through the night to ensure roads are passable.”
Other information to help you during bad weather includes:
■ near-live feeds from 12 cameras around South Lanarkshire to show you the road conditions
■ postcode look-up function to find your nearest grit bin
Or for more information see the roads in winter section of the council’s website.
