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this post was submitted on 02 Jun 2025
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You may not quite realize for how long roads are impassible to all traffic in northern states. Where I live, a couple hundred miles south of Grand Rapids, the snow and ice still make roads entirely impassible for a total of a week or so every winter; it takes the coordinated effort of hundreds of salt trucks and plows to get it cleaned out enough to drive, bus, walk, or bike on. Then that same effort has to be expended again a couple of weeks later.
Piping existing waste heat underground into a system like this, when the road is uncovered for repair anyway, would make a lot of sense for high-traffic areas so that plows can focus on other locations instead; it would also reduce the salt budget and plow fuel budget, and reduce the maintenance budget for cleanup and repair due to salt damage.
Going even a little bit further north, this would likely be even more effective. In some Michigan cities, roofed streets make economic sense; this seems even more cost-effective and less likely to require heavy repair.
Bike lanes, public transportation, roadway maintenance, and snow & ice clearing are all expensive. None of them have to turn a profit.
They're already doing this in Holland, Michigan.
https://www.cityofholland.com/879/Snowmelt-System
The waste heat comes from their power generation.
Nice. Holland seems like a pretty great place.
it is!
The downsides, the same weather that makes the snow and frost also causes shifts in the ground during freeze thaw cycles, causing damage to the road and heating pipes. The warm melt water also enters waterways and cause shifts in seasonal temperatures, messing with fish and insect hatching times causing them to potentially hatch too early for the spring food they rely on.
Since damage to the pipes and to the road tends to be concurrent, they can repair one when they repair the other.
As for the meltwater, this is going to be a fairly small amount of hot water in a regional sense. Snow is fluffy, but it's about 10x less dense than in its liquid state; meaning that ten inches of snowmelt is the equivalent of only about an inch of rain. That's about 27,000 gallons per mile of roadway (a mile is about an acre) going into the storm sewers, which is more or less the same amount of water that a large building goes through in a day. But this snowmelt isn't a daily occurrence, it's only going to happen a few times a year.
I recognize that I just did a lot of handwaving, but the point is that, to within an order of magnitude, it's hundreds of times less impact than building another large office building (which cities do frequently).
Building water will often go to sanitary sewers, which has a lot more treatment involved than going to storm sewers, so comparing road melt to a buildings water use isn't a perfect comparison.
As for repairs, a pothole can easily be patched on the surface relatively quickly by a road crew. A damaged pipe may need additional work such as cutting around the damage, depressurizing the entire system, and replacing the compromised section of pipe followed by a larger patch than needed for a pothole.
I'm not going for a perfect comparison, I'm just going for an order of magnitude. I know that sanitary sewers and storm sewers are different (in fact my city is currently in the middle of a big, multi-decade project to separate the two).
But let's do the math anyway. So, we're not talking about the water from a sanitary sewer being super cold here. Water leaving a treatment plant is usually around 68-95°F because that's the temperature required for the biological reactors that break down the gross stuff. Either end of that range is substantially higher than the melting point of water, so the snowmelt flowing from the storm sewer due to this under-road heating is going to be a great deal colder at release than the treated sewage flowing from the office building.
Oh, I forgot to answer this part:
Based on the image posted here, it looks like the pipes are flexible and laid several inches below the final grade of the road (look at where the manhole covers are for an estimate of the grade). That will keep the pipes from experiencing much more mechanical action than they can handle, and they'll be far below the level of a pothole.
They're also installed in parallel (note the line of fittings crossing the road about halfway up the photo). Any breakage or blockage in one of the loops will be passively compensated for in other lines.
Yeah; trains that can be their own ploughs would be communist.
Trains would definitely be a great choice. But in a lot of places in the midwestern US, the economic realities of fixed transit infrastructure are tricky.
Not impossible. I'm definitely not saying that. But they'd require more regulatory steps than a robust bus network, for instance.
Tell that to the pre world war two united states, porphyriato era mexico, and literally siberia.
I'm so glad roads are flexible and free.
Yeah, I know. But the last two were accomplished largely by fiat. Which should be impossible in the US, though...you know.
And the pre-WW2 US had the advantage of essentially being pre-suburbs. Now sprawl means that the cost of adequate rail connections increases exponentially while the tax base increases linearly.
Again, like I said before, this is not impossible. But it will require a concerted effort to reverse a century's worth of underinvestment in urban areas, white flight, and stigmatization of multi-family living; and right now, we're doing the opposite of all of those things.
Im glad the cost of car capable roads and their maintenance, plus fuel and vehicle subdidies, stays the same no matter what. That's so lucky.
No, of course they don't stay the same. I'm not asserting that at all. In fact, that's a big problem in a lot of places with huge road networks and proportionally too-small tax bases. But they're already there, and upkeep is cheaper than building new.
Is it?
The state of Michigan expects to spend $24,093 per lane-mile to maintain their roads. By contrast, the cheapest light rail line in the world costs $150 million per mile to build. Assuming that new rail line lasts for 6,000 years and never needs a single cent of maintenance, it might just barely break even with the financial cost of maintaining an existing road.
But induced demand means the cost of more road is part of the road.
Plus im guessing that rail cost includes power delivery infra and actual engines/cars.
So add the cost of every gas station to that number. Add the cost of the cars and their maintenance, or some dubiously calculated fraction thereof.
Add the maintenance cost of driveways and garages. Of parking lots. Of parking structures.
Induced demand is a good point, but the cost of building new lane-miles of road is "only" about $5 million per mile. (In Florida; I can't find exact numbers for Michigan, but the variance is unlikely to be dramatic.)
Power delivery, maybe. Engines and cars, probably not (at least not meaningfully), since the numbers I'm seeing are for extensions to existing lines. But we don't need to worry about adding gas station costs or the costs of car ownership to that, because those are privately-owned (and thus privately-borne costs).
We're not talking about societal cost here. We're talking about why localities don't do this. And the answer is, because it's expensive: the upfront cost for a massive public works project that won't be finished until after the current office-holders are no longer in public service would be at or above a billion dollars.
Added bonus: private ownership of some portion of transportation costs means that the localities can offload a good chunk of the cost to the people in a way that makes them feel like they have "freedum!"
See im taking about reasons should(n't)
If we're talking about why they dont, then fed hwy subsidy should also factor, and roads are functionally free to local budgets.
Yeah, I've definitely been coming at this from a perspective of why they don't. I absolutely think they should, even with all of the reasons that I've stated; though I acknowledge that it'd take a while and a lot of money to make the shift.
Yep, the federal highway subsidy is definitely a big factor here, too (though I don't think that's as big a deal as it might seem; numbers that are too big just become part of the marketing in the campaign to replace you. "outhouseperilous voted to spend $450 million on transportation last year!" becomes the soundbite, and your protestations that subsidies covered the entire cost won't get any traction).
To say nothing of how it's "woke" to not worship at the feet of the automotive industry.
Oh, thats true. Nevermind. I dont want to be burned as a heretic.
The part that you're forgetting is that in tops ten years this won't be a problem anymore anyway as nothing will freeze there anymore by then, because of all the cars (in large part)
In 10 years weather patterns will be more extreme, and might feature both worse blizzards and hotter summers.
... With the overall trend being that temperatures everywhere will rise. Currently there are places where most snow might fall, but soon enough sbow fall will not be something we have to deal with
Look it up
We really did a lot of damage calling the phenomenon "global warming" back in the 90s, didn't we?
I feel like climate change is also bad tbh, "change" isn't necessarily a bad thing.
Maybe "climate worsening", or "climate rot" or just "climate collapse". Just to make it explicitly clear that shit will get worse.
Some places will also get better in some ways.
To give an extreme example, there are many problems with melting the north but some people will benefit from “the northwest passage” being open to shipping year round
If I were really short-sighted …. I do appreciate not shoveling snow off my driveway very often and almost never using my snowblower anymore
How about "The Oncoming Storm?" Too dramatic?
Perhaps, though "Stormageddon" also has a nice ring to it.
How about “global we’re fucked”
Thumbs up for most accurate
Despair ain't gonna help.
No, I think we did damage when we stopped calling it global warming when it was applicable. The whole planet is getting warmer, which creates changes in climates, and eventually destabilizes and then collapses existing climates.
Global warming is what is causing climate change, and humans are what is causing global warming.
Yeah, but nobody listens to the whole explanation. They just hear "everything will always be hot, but it snowed just last February, so obviously global warming is a hoax."