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The Roads Minister's view
Page 53
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Roads minisler David Jamieson acknowledges that mistakes were made last winter when a light covering of snow brought the M11 to a halt for 20 hours leaving thousands of drivers stranded.
"Generally, incidents like these [adverse winter weather] are dealt with well," he adds. "But the M11 incident threw a lot of doubt on the system we had in place. So we undertook a root and branch study. We looked at every single aspect of what had gone wrong."
He admits that co-ordination between the Highways Agency (HA) and rescue services was inadequate. The police had their own communications systems, he says, but at the time HA gritter personnel relied on mobile phones. And as all those stranded drivers started to use their phones the gritters' telephones were rendered useless.
Since then HA vehicles have been fitted with two-way radios. HA and Met Office weather stations and radio stations are also better co-ordinated, he claims.