SNOW DAYS: What we could learn from Norway (From Banbury Cake)

SNOW DAYS: What we could learn from Norway

11:48am Wednesday 23rd December 2009

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FOR the second time this year, parts of Oxfordshire and the South East have been gripped by winter – and also for the second time this year, the ‘why oh why’ brigade have been in full voice, bemoaning Britain’s alleged inability to cope with snow.

Transport Minister Sadiq Khan appeared on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Tuesday and berated the railways, highways authorities, airports and just about everyone else for their perceived failures.

But since when has Heathrow Airport ever operated ‘normally’, as he put it. Is there ever a day when flights depart on time, even on glorious sunny days? And of course everyone else is properly prepared, aren’t they?

In February, the capital of a European country well known for its harsh winters was blanketed by a foot or more of snow in a few hours, on top of heavy falls in previous weeks.

The airport was closed, despite a snowploughing and de-icing operation organised with military precision.

The metro system, normally a model of reliability, suspended operations with passengers on stranded trains having to trudge through snow to reach stations. Main line trains were also at a standstill on some routes.

The local equivalents of the AA and RAC were swamped with calls for help from motorists, who the organisations said did not have the skills to cope with the conditions – quite a comment in a country where driving in snow is a fact of life. Which city was this?

Oslo, the capital of Norway, a place arguably better able to cope with winter than almost any other, where resources are not an issue and everything from roads to the power supply for the metro trains is designed with snow and ice in mind.

Admittedly, even by Norwegian standards, February’s snowfall was exceptional, with former colleagues telling me they couldn’t remember anything similar for many years.

Where the Norwegians excel is in recovering quickly from this kind of snowfall.

The airport was reopened after five hours.

An army of snowploughs is available to clear and grit roads and the railways and Metro soon get back on the move with the help of plough trains and snowblowers on 24-hour stand-by.

Are there lessons we can learn, or perhaps, re-learn here? Or would it mean money being wasted on things like extra snowploughs, ready for conditions that we won’t see again for 20 years?

While my rail journeys to and from Oxford this week and in February were largely trouble-free, the railways do have things to think about.

Suspending lightly-used services, such as the Oxford-Bicester Town branch, may be operationally convenient, but in the conditions that prevailed at times this year, trains were far more likely to get through than buses.

And while many older trains can be fitted with miniature snowploughs for the winter, recent designs often lack this feature.

When people can rely on public transport to keep running, they may well decide not to chance a journey by car.

But if people can’t be prised out of their cars, how about good old-fashioned winter tyres? How many people fit them these days?

When I was growing up in Yorkshire, there was a stack of these tyres in the corner of the garage, which would be fitted to my parents’ cars towards the end of the year.

Simple measures, but combined with a common sense approach to driving, make life easier on the roads, especially when these are often deliberately left with a covering of snow in much of Scandinavia.

Ploughing creates a layer of compacted snow, on which stone chippings are spread, to improve grip, a technique also used on pavements to help pedestrians keep their feet.

The rock salt favoured in Britain is used on some major roads in Norway to stop ice forming, but it has little effect on heavy snow – and there are growing concerns about the effects of salt run-off on wildlife and drinking water supplies.

Our councils seem so wedded to using salt they never try a little true (chipped stone) grit. It would be a great help to those of us slithering to work along icy pavements in Botley Road.

wcrossley@oxfordmail.co.uk

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