The night from Monday (12.1.) to Tuesday (13.1.) was one of the most difficult nights in terms of maintaining the most important traffic routes in the Bratislava and Trnava regions. All heavy machines were deployed to plough and grit the motorways. The most challenging traffic situation was in southwestern Slovakia, where 5,500 km were covered, and over 600 tons of gritting material were used.
“Preparations for the forecasted worsening weather conditions have started already on Monday at 17.30, when we launched preventive gritting in Bratislava. During that one night only, the motorway management and maintenance centre in Bratislava used 240 tons of gritting material to ensure traffic safety and road passability,” noted Filip Macháček, Director General of Národná diaľničná spoločnosť, a.s. (National Motorway Company, hereafter referred to as “NDS”).
Overall, motorway workers have driven almost 1,300 km on motorway sections in Bratislava managed by NDS. Heavy machines from Malacky covered a total of 900 km and used almost 140 tons of gritting material to ensure the passability of the D2 motorway from the border with the Czech Republic to the capital. Motorway workers from Galanta covered 1,650 km and used almost 132 tons of gritting material; workers from the centre in Trnava covered over 1,500 km, using 125 tons of gritting material.
Traffic situation complications in western Slovakia were also caused by the temporary closure of the Hungarian M15 motorway for vehicles over 7,5 tons that had to wait several hours at the Čunovo/Rajka motorway border crossing.
“Thanks to the full dedication of our workers, we managed to have the sections managed by NDS passable before the morning rush hour. We are working continuously at full capacity. However, it depends on the drivers themselves. Therefore, we would like to appeal for increased caution and considerate driving,” concluded Filip Macháček.
The National Motorway Company is responsible for winter maintenance on 1,230 km of motorways, expressways, and selected sections of 1st-class roads. This year, 710 workers are on winter standby duty at motorway management and maintenance centres across Slovakia. These centres have almost 300 machines for winter maintenance and thousands of tons of gritting material in storage, as well as several dozen kilometers of snow barriers installed in the field.