Our Environment Convener Cllr Lesley Macinnes comments on work to grit roads, footpaths and cycleways in the Capital as icy conditions continue.
Like many other areas of Scotland, our staff have been working tirelessly and as quickly as possible to tackle the ice which set in after showers of freezing rain overnight. We gritted all priority routes last night which includes routes to hospitals, bus routes and other areas that most need it. We did this again today and we are gritting category two and three routes now that the easing in conditions has allowed us to do this. We have thousands of roads and footpaths/cycleways in Edinburgh and it also hasn’t helped that due to very low temperatures grit on footpaths and cycleways will take longer to be ground into ice than on roads so as low temperatures continue please take extra care if you need to be out and about.
Our staff will continue to work round the clock to grit as much as we can while this cold snap continues. My thanks too to all the residents who’ve been out gritting local neighbourhood streets – we’re filling grit bins up again as quickly as we can and we’re deploying additional resource from other services to help us to do this over the course of the coming week.