In your opinion, is winter road maintenance in your area better or worse, then say 5 to 10 years ago?

I work for an organization that represents and advocates for employees, collectively. I’ve attended many conferences where the speakers talk about privatization of such services that used to be handle by civil service. Road maintenance is one of them. A company that works for profit is going to try to maximize profits by being cheap with things like salt. People don’t realize that when they vote to lower their taxes and lay off civil servants. They see one side of the issue, but the very important side you bring up, @SQUEEKY2 is the unfortunate consequence of voting that way.

Good question.

Worse, yet the property taxes continue to rise.

After the most recent bad snow storm, the local crew plowed only one lane of my two-lane dirt road. That meant some serious negotiations when we met a driver going in the opposite direction. Luckily we all have AWD, snow tires or four-wheel drive.

Our winter road maintenance is probably better than it was 10 years ago. They seem to better understand how to do it. Ours are all publically maintained. They don’t shirk on the salt or sand. The overall road maintenance is worse, because the money just isn’t there to do the job. The potholes are ridiculous.

Interesting question. I can’t speak so much for the highway maintenance, but I notice that sidewalk maintenance has changed drastically over the past few years. We are now back to salt and fine gravel, whereas there was a 2–3 year period during which they put down a green or blue solution to melt the ice. I have a feeling that they stopped in response to complaints. That stuff looked radioactive – and hearing reports that fracking waste is being used in some regions to melt ice on roads does not make anyone feel any safer about new substances being put down.

But the weirdest thing about that change is that it happened with no fanfare, and was halted with no fanfare. I have no idea what actually motivated it, and would have to do some serious digging to find out. It may just be that the substance didn’t work as well as they thought it might (although I seem to recall it was effective), or that it became too expensive.

Snow removal from roads is very quick and effective – in fact, the complaints I hear are in relation to the city working too hard to remove snow. We get a lot of snow here, so the city has to be on top of it, or everything would come to a grinding halt.

For the most part better, but we have not yet had a deep snow to put the city plows to the test. Plus I am on the road to work real early and usually before even the main roads are plowed and used to 4 wheeling my way to work.

No difference at all, but then, this is Georgia. We get snow every couple of years.

Seems about the same. Minimal snow so far this year – yay!

I think it’s better.

Thank you for your answers, and please tell other members about this question, would like to hear from as many as possible about this.

@jca That is one of my biggest complaints about privatizing highway maintenance , a private for profit company will cut corners with whatever they can get away with to max profits, do tax payers really want that with road maintenance?

I just had to pay my guy to sand my long driveway for the second time in 24 hours. Black ice ia everywhere. People are falling on the sidewalks in town and breaking bones, I am told. My daughter went off to do some errands with a pair of Yaktrax to wear over her boots.

The secondary public roads are also treacherous.

@gailcalled – roughly where is this?

@gailcalled Are your roads looked after by the Government or do private contractors do it??

I live in a very rural area. My town has 1600 residents and 62 miles of mostly dirt roads to be maintained. The town has its own highway department (superintendent is elected and he chooses his crew) paid for by the yearly town taxes. (Very high).

Roughly in Spencertown,Columbia County, NY

Halfway up my dirt road, in May. The local traffic jam.

About even, snow better or worse…ya get ma drift.

@gailcalled ya know with New York state having as many people as all of Canada, I didn’t expect a rural setting such as that.

It’s the shear size of NYC that throws people off. When we think of New York we tend to think of the city. New York as a state is beautiful.

You don’t believe me when I repeatedly say that I live in a rural area?

Most of the people in NYS are crammed into New York City and its commuting suburbs. State has 19.3 million people; the city over 8.4 million.

@SQUEEKY2 I live on a 3 to 4 mile section of town road maintained the same as Gail’s.. It has 7 houses, 12 people, 15 horses, 4 goats, a donkey, and 5 geese on it’s length.. When the trees are leafed out I can’t see another house. This state is very diverse and has some rural, some desolate, and some crowded areas.

Sorry I stand corrected on the population as well, I thought NY had the same population as Canada.
Canada has almost 16million more people than NY.
And guess your right most people are in NYC and other large cities,leaving a lot of rural space.

The cold and ice are making me cranky.

Its length.
You’re right.
sheer size

I, too live in NYS, @SQUEEKY2, and it’s rural where I live, too. Lake, horses, alpacas, the whole nine yards. I live about an hour south of @gailcalled, give or take. Yet I can go ten minutes to a major mall in CT and I can go 45 minutes to some cities in NYS.

Rural? B.C has only 4.6 million people and you could fit four to five state of New Yorks in it.
And the majority of those are on the coast.

B.C. has all that inhabited land heading towards the pole, up to 60˚ N. Latitude.

Here’s a population distribution map (from 2006, but you get the idea).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_British_Columbia#mediaviewer/File:British_Columbia_2006_population_density.PNG

@SQUEEKY2 And you’ll lose half of those come the next earthquake. ;)

@gailcalled Thanks, those were making me cranky, too. But did you mean “uninhabited”?

I certainly did.

Let’s put it a different way,if your area is serviced by private contractors do you think they are doing a better job then when the Government did your road maintenance ??