With software and salt alternatives: The winter service in the district works in a modern way
Created: 01/21/2022, 05:30
By: Martin Becker
"We don't have any problems with snowfall and ice," Frank Plate, head of the Riem road maintenance department.
© Thomas Rychly
When the roads become dangerously slippery with temperatures around freezing, Frank Plate makes sure that drivers in the Munich district don't slip.
The 57-year-old is the head of the Riem road maintenance department, whose winter service employees – together with the Sauerlach base – salt and clear the 383 kilometers of state and federal roads.
Sauerlach
- "We have no problems with snowfall and ice," says the winter service manager.
"But black ice presents us with real challenges." Fortunately, the weather forecasts are now so precise that the black ice scenario can be planned well.
Icy, frozen ground, approaching precipitation: this combination sets off the winter service alarm bells.
Check the situation using PC software
The experts are usually not surprised by this, as Frank Plate explained during a visit by Transport Minister Kerstin Schreyer to the Sauer base (we reported).
Because he and his team (44 employees, 33 of them in winter service) use so-called scouts: Every night at 2.30 a.m., the service begins and the first person checks the situation using special computer software before they set off for Sauerlach or Riem: How cold is it, how humid, how will the weather develop in the next few hours?
55 sticking points in the district
"Zero degrees or minus one - these are borderline cases: do we have to move out or not?" says the head of the road maintenance department.
So the scout makes a preliminary decision: will the winter service run the full program or just an “optimized round”, as the internal jargon calls it?
This stripped-down variant means "focusing on forest crossings, bridges and inclines".
Develey cucumber water replaces brine and saves millions of liters of water
The mustard manufacturer Develey from Unterhaching supports the winter service with cucumber water that is not required: This serves as a brine substitute and is used in a pilot project at the road maintenance depots around Dingolfing near Landshut. After the start of the pilot project a year ago, there are now measurable successes.
"The first test results show that the cucumber brine is an equivalent substitute for the brine previously produced in-house at the master workshops,"
says Transport Minister Kerstin Schreyer. "We have therefore expanded the project this winter and are saving
around 140 tonnes of salt and almost a million liters of water
at the road maintenance depots around Dingolfing ."
In the Dingolfing area, Develey makes salt water available in its local plant, which is produced during the production of pickled gherkins and normally has to be disposed of in a sewage treatment plant.
The brine in which the cucumbers are pickled during their six-week maturation process is
cleaned of botanicals, treated and enriched
until it has reached the appropriate salinity and can be applied to the streets.
The focus is now on optimizing the process flow and supply chains: if this succeeds, the project could
be extended to other road maintenance depots, municipal institutions and companies in the future
will. At the road and motorway maintenance depots alone within a radius of about 85 kilometers around Dingolfing, almost five million liters of water and 700 tons of salt
could be saved
per winter
. In addition to economic benefits, this also has many environmental benefits. Too much salt damages soil, plants and animals and leads to damage to cars and buildings.
There are fixed clearing and spreading plans - "and about 55 sticking points in the district of Munich".
Frank Plate mentions the Grünwalder Berg as an example.
There, as in many other neuralgic points, so-called ice warning systems are installed.
Sensors including a camera that provide precise information.
"We measure the temperature at a depth of five and 30 centimeters, as well as the humidity." Based on these parameters, which are all digitally evaluated, Frank Plate coordinates the deployment plan every day: "In the case of a full deployment, we send 26 clearing vehicles onto the road, in the case of an optimized one Round only six.” The road maintenance department is supported by local companies.
Omikron: Well prepared for employee absences
To ensure that there are no failures due to the corona pandemic due to the highly contagious omicron variant, the winter service in the district relies on a sophisticated personnel concept.
At the base in Sauerlach, the premises and changing rooms were converted in order to be able to exclude personal encounters.
The teams work in groups of four with staggered start times so that contact with one another is avoided.
The state-of-the-art snow clearing vehicles are now equipped in such a way that one driver can operate all the devices alone: "He has to vary the amount of salt, use the plow with its scraper bar and make phone calls." When in doubt, at the same time.
Sprinkle with the salt manager
The salt thing is a science in itself.
The hall in Sauerlach alone holds around 2500 tons of road salt, 1700 are currently left.
Other deposits are distributed across the entire district using silos.
However, brine is added to ensure that the salt adheres to the state and federal roads, i.e. is not blown up by the wind of the cars.
The mixture is called wet salt and must be put together precisely, depending on the weather – the “Salt Manager” PC program supports the winter service driver in this.
"Before we spread the salt, we wet it with the brine," explains Frank Plate.
"The future will be to no longer use dry salt at all, but to use 100 percent brine."
Strict hygiene concept
After work on the district's roads, it's not over yet: Before the end of the shift, every driver has to clean the clearing vehicle according to a fixed procedure, for example disinfecting surfaces such as the steering wheel, lever, seat, armrest and even the outside of the door handles. Corona shouldn't have a chance, and so far it's working: "We didn't have a single failure in winter service," says Frank Plate.
During her flying visit, Minister of Transport Kerstin Schreyer was impressed, both by the Corona hygiene concept and by the complexity of the winter service job itself.
"You can tell how sophisticated the system is - the highest standard," praised the minister from Unterhaching.
Winter service is an elementary part of the critical infrastructure: "How is the Sanka supposed to get to its destination when the roads are icy?
We should all be more grateful to those people who start working at 2:30 a.m. to enable us to drive.”