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Snow–free roads seem like a beneficial thing for most modes of transport though.
Judging by that picture, pedestrians can get fucked though.
Judging by that picture, pedestrians can get fucked though.
A picture can be deceiving.
That picture is of work being down on a part of Lyon street south of DeVos Performance Hall and Convention center, between Monroe Avenue and the Grand River.
(Don’t let the name fool you, DeVos Hall and DeVos Center are owned by the city. They’re just named after the billionaires who paid a chunk of change for its construction and subsequent renovations.)
The reconstruction there is to make the area much better for pedestrians. There used to be a some parking along that street, which I think when the work will be finished will be purely for valet service for the hotel on the south side of the street. That part of the street has been at least partially closed to cars for a while, even though most of the work is done. And I wouldn’t be shocked if those sidewalks are already heated.
As I said elsewhere, they’ve added a really nice seating area at the end of the street (you can’t really see it in this picture because it goes down toward the Grand River). This also better connects Monroe Avenue (where the picture is taken) to the walking bridge behind DeVos Hall that goes over the Grand River to the Gerald R Ford Presidential Library and Museum. Just across the street from that is the Grand Rapids Public Museum, with yet another pedestrian/cyclist only bridge back across the river.
Just behind the camera and about a block south is Rosa Parks Circle, another pedestrian focused area with safe access to several restaurants with outdoor seating and the Grand Rapids Art Museum.
In short, this is a very walkable part of town. It isn’t perfect, but it’s far from “pedestrians can get fucked.”
Also as I stated elsewhere, heating under the street like this can prevent the accumulation of snow which would be plowed onto sidewalks or bike lanes, and the accumulation of ice which would be treated with salt that would then run into the Grand River. It’s a very good solution for the specific problem faced by this city.
Hey it might not be a total retrofit.. the sidewalks could already have it.
This is the most inefficient way to remove snow. There are other options.
This is an excellent way to remove snow and ice in cramped areas without destroying to local water table with salt.
Is it though? I'd be curious to hear a more efficient method... Certainly, mobilizing a fleet of snow plows and salt trucks isn't more efficient in any sense of the word.
Yeah, it actually is more efficient to plow. It's grossly inefficient to melt ice into water.
See this xckd what if: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WYf9-xfm6t8
It starts by using a flamethrower (because the series is supposed to be about silly questions taken seriously), but it eventually converts everything in terms of joules. That can be easily converted into the necessary electrical output. Which is a lot of electrical output. Just a sick amount of energy.
Plowing is easily better. But yes, salt is an issue all its own.
This is a pretty simplified and reductive take. How much electricity does it take to power a snowplow that can weigh as much as 30 tons with salt for all surface street miles? Is the freeze-thaw-freeze cycle plus weight damage to the road more efficient by cost/resource use? What about snowbanks as a hazard and visibility obstruction?
And that's putting aside all the ecological damage salt causes or that these systems can often recycle waste heat. Your video about a car traveling highway speeds melting multiple inches of snow isn't a gotcha for a completely different situation.
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Muskegon has heated sidewalks and it works very well.
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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.
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).
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Piping existing waste heat underground into a system like this, when the road is uncovered for repair anyway, would make a lot of sense
They're already doing this in Holland, Michigan.
https://www.cityofholland.com/879/Snowmelt-System
The waste heat comes from their power generation.
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I mean this has a specific use case
You don't have to be negative about everything just because you don't understand it
It's not like you live in doomworld, doomsilvanya, 10230
That's what I was thinking. Downtown areas are difficult for snow removal and if this just sends it all down the sewers, this could be a huge savings.
Does this actually work? It seems a massive waste of money, you just need a heavy truck to pass on the road to have a pipe leak and break the whole system
Not to mention the energy cost to keep it over 0° C for all the winter
You wouldn't believe the secondary costs caused by thawing salt. And then there's the primary cost of operating vehicle park to spread a lot of salt each winter.
Although general streets would not be my first choice (you should start with bridges where corrosion is even more of an issue) every example of heated street I saw was just a matter of "yeah, simple math says this makes sense".
PS: And that's obviously not car-specific even. Every newly build bike lane should incorporate this idea. Modern bike and pedestrian bridges doubly so.
PPS: For reference: new bicycle-bridge in Germany... 16 million € to build, of which the added heating is a very small fraction (300k).
Yes, it works. They do it in Norway... For the sidewalks.
what's the norwegian word for feeling bad for someone else's shame?
I regularly walk through a pedestrian area that has such heating here in Helsinki. Most of the time it works, but when it gets cold enough and there's a lot of new snow, the snow just turns into a wet slush that people walk through until it freezes into a horrible icy mess dotted with deep footprints. It's quite a contrast to the nice and relatively even packed snow around the place at such times. Drainage is important, as is keeping the power level adequately high. Half measures will fail if the conditions get bad.
If they also plow the bulk of the snow off when it's fresh, then it could work nicely.
it can save money over labor and increased road maintenance of snow plows, it also makes it significantly less of a trip hazard because ice patches get removed faster.
I could see this being worth the cost on some especially busy streets that are critical for commerce or for using around emergency services. Maybe outside where the snow plow are too, lol, how else would they plow out?
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Well if it works.
Grand Rapids isn’t the most bike-friendly city, but it’s also very far from the worst. I bike through it somewhat regularly, and have only come close to dying once (while biking over the speed limit on Lake Drive in East GR, but not fast enough for one asshole who decided to pass me illegally and almost got hit).
We could certainly use more bike lanes, but we have some good trails in Kent County.
This method of snow prevention is awesome when the weather is right. You keep ice and snow from accumulating in the first place, so it doesn’t need to be plowed and end up blocking the very sidewalks and bikelanes we want. And it also means you don’t need nearly as much salt.
It’s not a perfect solution, but it’s not a bad one either.
Edit: Also this is near an area that is being redone to be largely pedestrian-focused. Cars have been cut off from a good chunk of that road I think, the parking garage exit that goes onto that street has been closed for over a year now. Maybe it will reopen, but regardless, they’ve added a lovely little sitting area down that street. And just down that street where this is shot there’s a lovely walking bridge over the Grand River to the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library/Museum, which is just across the street from the Grand Rapids Public Museum, which has yet another walking bridge (the Blue Bridge) over the Grand River back to this side.
In other words, this is a very walkable part of the city. Again, not perfect, but better than lots of places.
How long until those water lines are rendered useless by street cracks?
Probably longer than we'd expect, because the street will crack less if it's kept at a consistent temp?
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Itt, people defending cars in fuck cars
But actually. Nothing a solid underground system wouldn't solve.
Trams need only heated switches, just saying.
I imagine snow also blocks tram tracks, no? Or are we talking gondola-type things that hang from a cable and don't touch the ground?
I went to an onsen (hot spring) town in Japan. They have hot spring water, so on a lot of the streets business owners just turn the hose on and point it downhill. Worked pretty well for keeping the streets clear of snow, but requires a lot of existing geographical conditions.
Doesn't that make the roads slippery? And if there's a real cold wave, it all might flash-freeze regardless.
less slippery than snow/ice. but to flash freeze hot spring water, that is maybe 50°C or hotter, it must be really really really cold.
There are a couple of bikeways that are heated and it actually saves money, because the way lasts longer. But I believe that's mostly used on bridges, because the salt would otherwise damage the bridge. I don't know if this works out for normal roads, too
That only makes sense in places, where you have free heat. Like in Iceland. Where they basically sit on volcanos. Other than that, this is just a waste of money and resources.
I am pretty sure there is plenty of excess heat in the sewers of most cities. Compared to having to redo the street and sewers from salt damage, operate a fleet of plows and all the other currently used measures, it could even be worth it if the heat comes from a boiler.
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awful post. seems you just hate pedestrians and people who use bicycles
OP, I appreciate the effort but there's no hyperlinks anywhere to verify - can anyone from MI care to report? Also: are the sidewalks heated too?
Korea has this, it's great for buses in the mountains: https://koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/news/2023-12-24/national/socialAffairs/Underroad-heating-a-lifesaver-in-Seouls-hilly-communities/1942752
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this post was submitted on 02 Jun 2025
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