INNOVATIONS IN WINTER ROAD MAINTENANCE PRESENTED AT THE INTERNATIONAL ROAD FORUM
WTG sent its experts to participate in the St. Petersburg International Road Forum on innovative technologies and materials used for maintenance, repair and ensuring safety of roads and structures in winter. The forum brought together industry leaders from Russia, Estonia and Finland.
Meeting the requirements of modern national standards for road maintenance, increasing vehicle traffic and ensuring the safety of pedestrians are the main trends that have recently compelled municipalities to revise their maintenance technologies by introducing new effective methods of cleaning. Effective snow removal ensures smooth and accident-free movement of vehicles and pedestrians, and therefore the comfort and safety of the city as a whole.
Russian innovations and the latest IT-solutions presented at the forum are designed for a qualitative leap in winter road maintenance. The Ledokol device for cleaning sidewalks from ice, the Snowless snow-melting system, modern technologies and materials for winter paving, and modern monitoring systems were in the center of attention of the industry experts.
Forum participants had a unique opportunity to share their experience not only with neighboring regions, but also to learn about the peculiarities of winter maintenance and combating slipperiness in the Baltic and Scandinavian countries: the latter have been using multicomponent chemicals in combination with wetting technology for the past decade. In Russia, this technology is used for the production of two-phase deicing agent, which is already in use in Perm, Novosibirsk, Kazan, Yekaterinburg, Ufa, Izhevsk and other cities. The two-phase agent is more effective, environmentally friendly and economical in comparison with standard solid reagents. The wetted phase starts the process of melting the snow and ice layer much faster, and wetted granules are more accurately distributed on the road surface, while the oncoming air flows from cars do not carry them beyond the roadway.
This forum has once again confirmed that Russian manufacturers follow global trends in the production of environmentally friendly and cost-effective multicomponent chemicals. The GOSTs that are adopted in Russia today meet global standards, including the requirements for deicing compounds.