Clearing the Way: Lessons on Winter Maintenance for Walking and Cycling

Ask anyone who walks or cycles in winter and they will tell you the same thing: a path is only as good as the last time it was cleared.

The Union of Harju County Municipalities (HOL) set out to understand a series of shared questions raised during the BATS project: why winter clearing for active mobility so often falls short; what can be done about it; who is responsible; where things go wrong; and how other cities handle the same problems.

The outcome: a transnationally relevant set of recommendations and collection of best practices on YRAM winter maintenance, for Baltic Sea Region municipalities to take up.

The trouble is in the gaps, no matter the geography

Interviews with the Estonian Transport Administration, AS Teede Tehnokeskus, the City of Tallinn and seven other municipalities showed that the system works on paper. The problems come from coordination. In Tallinn, four separate bodies commission winter maintenance. Where their areas meet, snow often ends up blocking pavements and cycle paths. Local rules vary too: only two municipalities meet the national clear width of 1.2 metres, and four set no minimum at all.

A survey of BATS partners and collaborators in Klaipėda, Gothenburg and Porvoo found familiar issues. Pedestrians often come last, fines are too low and contracts are too rigid. Partners also shared what works, such as real time monitoring and using residents’ reports to guide daily work.

Ideas and recommendations from winter cities

The study comes with a set of 100+ International Benchmarking Cards. Each card links a weather problem to two cities that have tackled it. As examples, Copenhagen clears cycle paths by 8 am, before the streets; Oulu keeps cycle paths on packed, gritted snow; Stockholm sends maintenance workers out on cargo bikes.

When it comes to recommendations, most of them cost little: reducing the number of organisations responsible per area maintained, joint tenders between neighbouring municipalities, and clearing the most vulnerable paths first. Some good examples are already in Harju County, like Viimsi’s VAAL platform, which shows residents in real time where maintenance vehicles have been.

Any municipality facing a hard winter can pick a card, see who has already solved the problem, and start from there.

Resources

• YRAM Winter Maintenance Study
• YRAM International Benchmarking Cards
• International Benchmarking Survey
• Maintenance Networks and Bottlenecks Scheme

Programme Manual Online

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