Vilnius municipality will assess whether the capital should purchase newer equipment for street maintenance, says Povilas Poderskis, director of the municipality's administration.
Responding to drivers' complaints that traffic was paralyzed in many parts of the capital due to untimely cleanup, P. Poderskis admits the mistakes of the services, but says that the current road maintenance company "Beam" technique is not completely effective in such situations.
"The current technology, spreaders, sprinkle salt on the road, which does not melt the immediately formed bare ice. There is a technique with nozzles, similar to agriculture, but we didn't want to buy it because it seemed unreasonable and expensive. We will now review these plans as the townspeople's time is more valuable. The testing of this special salt spray equipment is expected this week," says the head of the municipal administration on his Facebook account.
According to him, the equipment is already being transported from Riga.
"If it proves successful, we will evaluate the possibilities of purchasing additional equipment," he added.
Mr. Poderskis also emphasizes that previously "Grinda" used to go to the streets in response to reports from the General Assistance Center about traffic incidents, the situation changed after the installation of weather monitoring tools, but, according to him, "processes need to be further improved", that is, to coordinate actions with Automobiliu the road administration, which has installed road temperature monitoring sensors in some places. In his opinion, getting information faster would allow the technician to go to the streets even before traffic jams form.
According to road users, on Wednesday morning, a snowstorm occurred in a large part of Lithuania, in Vilnius, where the snowstorm caused disruption public transport traffic, many traffic accidents were recorded, traffic jams were formed. Mayor of Vilnius Remigius Šimašius also admitted that the capital's services did not react quickly enough to the weather conditions on Wednesday morning and apologized to the citizens of Vilnius for the inconveniences experienced.
Prime Minister Saulius Skvernelis also criticized the capital's road users.
"It is no longer the time to wake up in the morning and look at the sky and hope for something. "Unfortunately, once again winter came unexpectedly", the Head of the Government told journalists.
Author: Ignas Jačauskas
