Half a million kilometres covered by motorway maintenance vehicles during the winter maintenance period

Over the last winter, road maintenance machinery of Národná diaľničná spoločnosť, a.s. (National Motorway Company, hereinafter referred to as “NDS”) has driven 484 446 km when providing for winter motorway maintenance such as ploughing and gritting or a combination of both. Compared to the previous winter period, the volume of work increased by roughly 6 %. Around 28 thousand tons of gritting material were used. Due to the increased traffic volume, winter maintenance was more intense not only on motorways but also on junctions as well as motorway feeders.

The winter maintenance machinery intervened for the first time on 9 November 2023 on the motorway section between Zvolen and Lučenec. The last time the gritting spreaders were dispatched was at the end of April 2024 on the northern D1 motorway near Liptovský Mikuláš and Mengusovce. 

During the winter period of 2023/2024, NDS provided maintenance works for almost 1200km of motorways, expressways, and 1st class roads as follows:

  • Motorways................................................... 514,15 km
  • Expressways       ........................................… 228,58 km
  • Selected 1st class roads................................ 144,02 km
  • Feeders, rest areas, parking lots …….........… 80,79 km
  • Junctions.....................................................  223,58 km

The safety and passability of motorways and expressways were provided by 710 staff employees of NDS, among them are 105 dispatchers, 15 heads of regional management and maintenance centers, and 590 other staff workers. They had 284 machines at their disposal, the biggest part of which were 169 spreaders. We have also gradually deployed 20 new spreaders that were used for winter maintenance works across Slovakia. To prevent snow from getting onto the roadway, 69 500 m of snow fencing and 4 327 m of snow barriers were installed around the motorways.