MODERN WINTER SERVICE IN SWITZERLAND – RESULTS AND EXAMPLES OF SWISS EXPERT COMMISSION OF VSS-RESEARCH AND STANDARDIZATION IN THE FIELD OF ROAD AND TRANSPORTATION

摘要

The Swiss expert commission EK 6.02 of VSS is responsible for research and standardization in the field of winter maintenance in Switzerland. The commission is also working on the level of European Standardization. The special situation in Switzerland is in preparing standards and requirements for a practical winter service under a wide range of circumstances that means from big cities like Zurich or Basel with high traffic volumes to small touristic villages with special traffic restrictions, from lowland regions as the Rhine valley to mountainous regions with pass roads.Generally the major goals of road operations are safety, environmental protection, economics and the necessary optimisation of these issues in delivering high quality winter maintenance services for the user of the infrastructure. For increasing road safety and optimizing traffic flow the needs are high quality prediction and sensor technologies as well as appropriate winter service treatments at the right time. Because of the complexness of meteorological, traffic and winter service processes, winter service in the Swiss topography needs a matrix of different winter service treatments and organisational requirements to increase road safety and improve traffic flow and environmental protection.This paper will explain the way of a modern winter service in Switzerland and will show innovative winter service treatments and examples of winter measurements under special conditions. A selection of these examples is the following:1. Special winter service in pass opening (Grimsel pass, Susten pass,…)2. Use of wood chips on pedestrian ways3. Complex inner-city junction Bern Wankdorf with high traffic volume4. Use of molasses in winter service on highways (see presentation of Pablo Julia, ASTRA).