Luxembourg only tends to use its gritters in winter, to prevent roads from becoming icy. In what initially looked like a practical joke, a spokesperson of the Utrechtse Heuvelrug council has confirmed that the town is using gritters to cool the tarmac down.
The local authorities have deployed the use of gritters to spread salt on certain roads in order to cut down the heat of the asphalt. Utrechtse Heuvelrug is not the only area using gritters, as Noorderveld, in the northeast of the Netherlands, is doing the same to its roads.
The explanation in Noorderveld is that the salt pulls humidity from the air, which in turn cools down the tarmac. This should prevent streets from cracking and the surfaces from sticking. The rather unconventional method of cooling streets down is mainly in operation in the east of the Netherlands, near the German border.
However, Dutch motorways and other important routes do not require gritting given the special structure of these roads’ surfaces. The structure allows the humidity to be released from the tarmac.
