The South Moravian Road Administration and Maintenance Agency is launching a new map application that will provide the public with live online information on efforts to maintain the roads of South Moravia during the winter. Specifically, it will trace the number of maintenance vehicles equipped with spreaders and snow ploughs, their current location, and the condition of the roads which have already been treated.
“Our regional road users have been using a similar system for 10 years,” said Jiří Crha, Deputy Governor of the South Moravian Region for transport. “In this way, they can monitor in real time how many vehicles are in the field and what they are doing. As the interest in these activities of road workers is enormous, especially during winter maintenance, we decided to transfer the system to a website where it will be accessible to anyone 24/7.”
The system displays information about road treatment, i.e. spreading grit and ploughing. Sections will appear in purple when vehicles are moving along the road but do not have the spreader on or are not ploughing, on so-called inspection drives.
“During the inspection drive, the vehicle may go into maintenance mode if a reduction in drivability is detected,” explained the director of the South Moravian Road Administration, Roman Hanák. “If the sections are coloured from green to red, blue to yellow, the vehicles are spreading or ploughing. The timeline for the treatment of individual sections is based on the law, which stipulates that sections classified in the relevant order of importance must be treated in the case of I. order within 3 hours, II. order within 6 hours, and III. order within 12 hours.” He added that the application also includes a display of active vehicles (with the engine running) and inactive ones, which disappear from the map 15 minutes after the engine is turned off.
“It’s the first step for people to have an overview of the work of our road workers and to be able to see what is currently being done,” said regional governor Jan Grolich. “The shape is not yet final and it will keep moving. Work is being done to make the winter maintenance plan appear on the map, so that you can see the treated sections according to importance, and also which parts of the roads are not being maintained. In the summer, mowing along the roadside and the location of vehicles performing routine maintenance could also be reflected in the map.”
The map just published only shows the movement of vehicles that provide maintenance on II. and III. class roads outside the city of Brno. “Brněnská Komunikace has a new supplier for its GPS system from the winter of 2023/2024, which currently does not match ours, and we are still discussing the harmonisation of data,” said Hanák.
