When snow falls, many residents ask the same question: why aren’t the roads cleared immediately, and why doesn’t the roadway look like black asphalt? As Mariusz Lickiewicz, a former firefighter, community activist and employee of the District Roads Authority for 10 years, explains spontaneously on his social media profile, the answer is not simple at all and cannot be reduced to the “bad intentions of road crews.”
A key role is played by road categories and their winter-maintenance standards. In Poland, public roads are divided into several categories—from motorways and expressways, through national, provincial and district roads, to municipal roads. Each has a designated winter-maintenance standard.
The highest, Standard I, applies to motorways and expressways. This means the fastest possible response from the services, although—as the expert emphasizes—even here “immediately” does not mean miracles. Snowplows and gritters are heavy vehicles that travel at 30–50 km/h, not helicopters.
Standards II and III, covering national and provincial roads, already allow for certain delays and, importantly, do not always require the roadway to be cleared completely down to black asphalt. The situation is different still on roads covered by Standards IV–VI, mainly district and municipal roads. Here, the services may respond even within three hours after the snowfall stops, and instead of snow removal, the plan often calls only for roughening the surface with sand or a sand-and-salt mixture.
Moreover, there are also public roads excluded from winter maintenance—for example, unpaved tracks running through fields, where snow removal would be pointless and unjustified.
“It is not the case that hundreds of snowplows and gritters take to the roads with the first snowflake. And it never will be,” explains Mariusz Lickiewicz. “Costs, changing weather conditions and applicable standards determine this. No local government could afford to assign one snow-removal vehicle to every 10 kilometers of road.”
The specialist also points to a sense of entitlement in society. Many drivers expect perfect conditions outside their homes within a few dozen minutes, without realizing how winter road maintenance operates. Meanwhile, a slippery surface is not the “fault” of a commune head, mayor or district governor, but the result of the system’s realities and financial limitations.
Finally, it is worth remembering one more thing: non-public roads—residential-estate roads, internal roads or those belonging to developers, cooperatives and homeowners’ associations—are not maintained by local governments. There, responsibility for winter upkeep rests with the managers of the property.
So before asking next time, “Why didn’t anyone clear this?”, it is worth knowing that the answer often lies in tables of standards, not in the negligence of the services.
Mariusz Lickiewicz—a former firefighter, community activist and experienced practitioner in the operation of public services. He was associated with the Bolesławiec District Roads Authority for 10 years, where he dealt with issues related to road infrastructure maintenance, including winter road maintenance. He is known for his involvement in local affairs and for promoting cycling (he organized one of the most difficult ultramarathon cycling events in Poland). He was also a co-organizer of “Gliniada.”