February 02nd 2009, a day that shows sheer failure of local councils & UK government.
If you have compared the snowfall that came overnight in UK with the US it is nothing! It may be hard to believe, but in one way, nature did council highways managers a favour.
Thanks to the Weather scientists and media for vast notifications for the commuters looked out of their windows and heeded the warnings not to travel. It was different in 2003 when the snow came mid-afternoon, and travellers tried to get home.
It is a process that the salt has to be on the road when the snow is fairly light, and most roads were well covered during Sunday evening. But it also helps to have a bit of traffic grinding the salt and snow together, and in some cases, crashes stopped the traffic, and the snow just lay on top of the salt.
A big question is that a big factor stems from the way Britain's roads are managed?
The Highways Agency looks after the major roads and can call on a bigger fleet of snow-clearing vehicles. Then comes to the local roads are the responsibility of local councils, and the response teams vary.
A couple of inches snow brings a absolute standstill the entire city of London!
Do you know, the bourough of Westminster have had one gritting lorry for each square mile. That may explain the fate of London's buses which were brought to a total standstill for the first time in recent history.
So whom to blame?
Councils faced criticism for a failure to prevent disruption which stopped millions of people getting to work in recent days. Councils are responsible for nine out of every ten miles of road in the country. The Highways Agency is responsible for motorways and A roads, while Transport for London (TfL) is responsible for arterial trunk roads in the capital. Both TfL and the Highways Agency also insisted their stocks were in no danger of running out.
As per the safety matter, the national train services were slowly returning to normal, with only Kent and Sussex still suffering major reductions in service. All the Airports Heathrow, Gatwick and 2 other (Luton & Stansted) have had domestic flight cancellations and severe delays to International network.
But questions were asked about whether much of this week's disruption to schools and businesses could have been avoided. I would say YES, as you are aware london ground to a near halt on Monday when buses were cancelled and train and Tube services were severely disrupted after thick snow blanketed the capital. No doubt that an estimated one in five workers took the day off while more than two million children are believed to have enjoyed a second day off school on Tuesday as up to 8,000 schools closed across the UK. This is nothing but a setting up a bad-example to children on decisions to close schools due to the snow!
