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Snow and Ice Control and the Transport Environment

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 August 2009

Philip H. Jones
Philip H. Jones
Affiliation:
Professor of Civil Engineering, Coordinator of Snow and Ice Control Study Group, and formerly Director, Institute for Environmental Studies, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario M5S 1A4, Canada.
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Extract

There is much to be learned if we are to optimize the procedures for maintaining ice-free roads in the wintertime. Sociological studies indicate that investigations should not only be of technological measures to maintain bare pavements for ‘summer driving’ in the winter, but also we might well reduce the driver's expectations, educate him or her in the matter of how to drive under hazardous conditions, and generally accept a lower level of mobility in exchange for reduced costs and environmental damage.

Increased availability and efficiency of public means of transit may be forced upon an unwilling public in the years to come by a much-reduced portable energy-source (gasoline), and this change in transportation habit may have further impact on winter maintenance procedures. For many reasons, we can no longer use the methods of the past with a gay disregard for our environment and often limited resources faced by an increased world population.

The paper deals mainly with the use particularly of common salt (NaC1), but also of calcium chloride (CaCl2) and the defroster Verglimit, to reduce hazards on roads in times of freezing temperatures, and concludes that, whereas the former single chemicals pose environmental problems as possible ground-water and surface-water hazards to humans and their corrodible possessions, as well as to vegetation especially near treated highways, the multi-chemical patented Verglimit offers an encouraging new approach—apart from its high cost which, however, can be mitigated to some extent by judiciously limited application.

Type
Main Papers
Information
Environmental Conservation , Volume 8 , Issue 1 , Spring 1981 , pp. 33 - 38
Copyright
Copyright © Foundation for Environmental Conservation 1981

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References

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