...my road:



Yes, it's private.  I understand that it isn't an interstate, but I tell you what, if all the neighbors who live up and down the county road at the top would get together to clear the road in their immediate areas, the road at the top of the picture would look like the road at the bottom.

And yes, we're going to do some pretty extensive sub-grade repairs to our road and repave it within the next few years.  We don't need no stinkin' county.

Try clearing the road when it has a foot and a half of snow on it

Do you even need to plow that?

Interesting that you say that.

I live on a cul de sac... one of my neighbors has a plow on his lawn mower.  While I appreciate the effort he has put forth, it appears that he has smeared everything around resulting in a semi slushy mess that will re freeze and end up worse than the snow that was on there

Lol.  South Carolina.

That's a heavy frost dude, no need to break out the heavy equipment.

That's a driveway.

Why are all the store parking lots plowed hours, and in some cases days before major thoroughfares?

We've actually gone up in shifts about every 6 hours or so during the day/early evening, then we're inside for 12 hours or so overnight.  We also maintain our own supply of Ice Melt, so that also helps a great deal. Keeping it cleared off like that means that it's easy to maintain in that state.

FWIW, over half of the people on that road are transplanted Yankees.  It's funny to hear them complain and say things like, "I didn't move down here so I could keep doing this."  

The obvious question that nobody's asked is, "That's nice that your road is all clear, but what happens once you get to the county road?"  

Really?

That's a country thoroughfare.



Actually, it's only about 5/8 of a mile, so yeah, it's kind of like a long driveway.

Wait until some good intentioned neighbor tears the ever loving shit out of the road with a plow and then you get the freeze thaw cycle and a hell of a repair needed in the spring.  

I have solar heating for my driveway, the snow doesn't even have a chance to accumulate.

In this case, the developer paid to build the road, we pay to maintain it.  As I said in the OP, we're about to start some pretty major work, all funded with cash out-of-pocket, not with public or private debt and not with our neighbors' tax dollars.  It's surprisingly easy to afford when you're sharing the cost with a few dozen families and you make a point to save up over time.  Making extensive sub-grade repairs, addressing drainage issues and resurfacing our 5/8-mile road will cost around $100k at the top end (according to several quotes we've gotten from paving contractors).  A few hundred bucks a year in the kitty allows us to pay cash for this.

At first I was like "Do tell about this solar heating system" then I saw he was from Arizona.  

Ha

Yeah, that doesn't really convince me of anything.

Not going to work on a primary road that has 200,000+ cars traveling it a day, plus all the secondary roads that feed into it.

So what you are saying private roads are better because the government does not do the job it gets paid to do? Basically a public road SHOULD look like a private road.

Doesn't need to.  Neither our road nor the county road at the top gets anything near that sort of traffic.  As I said in the OP, I'm not talking about interstates, here.

I laughed when I saw where you were from... back in the 1960's my grandpa moved from Idaho to Phoenix, he mistakenly packed his snow shovel and didn't know what to do with it. sold it at a yard sale as a "sand rake, for grooming your lawn"

Really, the point in all this is pointing out how easy it is to take care of certain tasks that we have come to rely on government to address for us.  Obviously, certain things are better handled by government, but we've allowed the list of government responsibilities to grow far to fat over the decades.

Not enough snow to bother with in either picture.

You are trying to hard. There are a couple functions the government is needed for, roads being one of them.

Snow?



I've seen a 5 minute flurry this year. It's almost 80 outside right now.



Sucks to be y'all!

Why can't roads, at least to some extent, be handled privately?

Because private contractors have more plows or they would be out of business.  Government can have a plow for each road if you want to pay for it.

Yes, 88 today - 90's forecast for this weekend.

They can. Just like water and trash or gas or internet.

The only thing we "need" the govt for is murder (military) and a money system.

Just look at the all butt hurt over the new tolls at the Midtown and Downtown tunnels in Norfolk.

I consider myself libertarian, but even I can appreciate the benefits of government run and maintained transportation infrastructure.

We built a toll road down here, too, and there was definitely some butt hurt, but for a good reason.  The state kept telling us, "It's private, and no taxpayer dollars will ever be used to build or maintain it."  Here's how the road's owners (whoever they are) describe it on their website:



So:

1. The road is not private, but owned by the SCDOT.

2. The claim that "no taxpayer dollars were spent" is balderdash, because it was funded through the sale of bonds, which are paid off using taxpayer dollars because nobody but the squirrels uses that road.

3. The claim that "all maintenance costs are paid out of toll revenues" is also balderdash, because maintenance is performed by the SCDOT.  Nobody but the squirrels use that road, but you can bet that SCDOT isn't maintaining it for free or at a discount.

Hence, butt hurt, and justifiably so.

Throw thousands of cars and commercial trucks on there every day and see how much you spend on maintaining and rebuilding at needed intervals.

Tremendous difference between parking lots and thoroughfares.
I just retired from 23 years with CDOT, plowed 19 winters, supervised crews for 4.
The biggest issue is traffic, you can run 6 plows in a wedge down a highway 3 miles and turn around to do the same the other direction. When you get back to your starting point you would swear a plow had never been through. The motoring public does an outstanding job of just undoing what you did. I could never understand this, 6 12' plows will clear 4 lanes of interstate and the morons will still drive in the windrows we pushed right and spread the crap back out into the cleared lanes.
I used to field the question all the time: "why don't you just line up 14 plows and plow it all at once?"
Ain't that easy, there are so many variables to consider.
Some depends on the snow, if it is 4" of fluffy powder or 6" of heavy wet snow. By the time 4 lanes worth of snow gets rolled to the right your far right side trucks may not be able to push it, even if they are 6 by 6 trucks.
Roll too much snow to the right and you have closed off the on/off ramps and now get to look forward to hours busting ramps open.
And hours of phone calls from a pissed off public.
Logistics- most "patrols" ran 3-4 trucks, often you cannot afford to pull them from their home patrol roads to get together and pull the wedge down the interstate, they will lose their home roads and then you have an entire new mess.
Politics- yup, even in snow removal. Wait until a Senator or member of the Transportation Commission gets tied up in a traffic jam from pulling a wedge down the highway. Not a fun phone call to deal with.
Time of day- it's a toss up, Daytime you have the high traffic count to battle, nighttime you have colder temperatures and higher speeds of traffic to deal with. Make the wrong decision and you get people hurt. Nothing worse than having your driving lanes in decent shape at the end of the evening rush hour only to have a night crew pull fresh snow across them and make a skating rink out of a freeway.
At best it is a balancing act, you have to keep the roads passable but also be able to have assets available to keep coverage on all the roads. In Denver the average patrol has 200 lane miles of roadway surface to contend with. Add an inch of snow an hour and it is a tall task.
Cut them a little slack, they are doing a critical job trying to keep the roads passable for you.

Roads are also typically classified by ADT (Average Daily Traffic) counts and those define Levels of Service. Naturally a higher ADT receives a higher LOS.
In CO the classes are A,B,C and D. A roads receive 24 hour coverage and are run under a "Bare Road" policy, meaning snow removal operations commence from the first flake down until the roads are bone dry. All roads in urban areas fall under this level. Main lines get priority, arterial roads and secondary roads are dealt with in that order. B level service is daylight removal operations only, your on your own at night. C level means sporadic coverage, basically when and if crews can get to them. D level roads are seasonal and closed during the winter months.

Y'all don't get much of the white stuff down there so I doubt your DOT and Counties have a well laid snow removal plan.

You didn't read the whole OP, or my subsequent posts, did you?

How much snow do you really have?

This morning, it was about 5 inches or so on the county road (just a sort of conservative guess).  I measured 3 inches in my driveway yesterday morning and it snowed all day and into the night with flurries continuing into this morning.

ETA:  Remember, though--this is SC so that might as well be 5 feet.  

I snapped this pic yesterday. It's the first time I seen a plow down here

Just broom that off.

That ain't even snow

Thanks. It's always a pleasure to read a well-constructed take on someone's area of expertise. It's one of the things I value about GD, that whatever the topic there's a chance that someone will contribute something like this. Even though I grew up in Chicago and thus saw a ton of snow I confess that I was pretty oblivious to all the infrastructure work going on around me to keep that operation running.



Edit: Cut the quote down.





 

Which government?
That's the important question.

Is it?  OP's important question seems to be centered on govt vs no govt.

I live 5 miles down a private road , local landowners got together and we all pitch in $200 a year to maintain over 68 miles of private road .  It's voluntary to chip in but everyone does
about 5 of us have equipment and we pay for roadbase and fuel/maint with that $200/year whats left over goes to beer and bbq as a road crew appreciation

So everyone who could reasonably be expected to use that road is expected to pay for it's maintenance?  Fascinating.  If only this model could be applied on a larger scale.  Maybe at the state level, in order to take advantage of economies of scale.  You might even have enough money to hire your own full time maintenance people.

This whole argument is reminiscent of anarchists who don't realize that everything they're proposing is exactly why the government is doing the job.  This model was already tried and evolved into the one we have now.

BTW you guys do a pretty good job do you stick all the newbs on i-25 between den and cos because they are the exception to the CO DOT rule they plow like old people fuck , rest of the state where the real snow falls you guys do a great job

its the opposite here

You miss an important aspect but many statists don't realize that what they propose ......
voluntary and local control mean nothing to statist i know

And then you get people who want to pay for the support of the roads they use, so you need some kind of enforcement method, etc etc etc
And then you end up creating a government entity that deals with it.  It's the natural evolution of what you're proposing.