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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.
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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.
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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So many people get heated driveways, use it for a year, get the cost for running it and never use it again...
It seems like it would only be close to “reasonable” to run in a place where snow is so minimal that you don’t even need to bother dealing with it.
But if you live somewhere like where I live, where a bad storm is 10-14” of snow, that’s gotta take what, days of running the system?
Not really. You're thinking of using it to clear 10-14" of snow that's already built up. But with the street being kept just above freezing during the snowstorm, the snow hitting the street will melt immediately, never sticking to begin with.
And since you only need 5° or so above freezing, it takes less energy than you might think to keep it there.
Watching this video of someone in buffalo ny who has one:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=W-x9o5IEtMo
It definitely seems to keep up fairly well with what looks like very heavy snowfall but struggles quite a bit, especially towards the end (around 9m).
Statistics posted at the end as well; $26.33 for this storm. In buffalo that could add up pretty quick.
Though granted looking at the snowfall on the minivan I would much rather be this person than the person next door with god knows how much snow to dig through. I have a snow blower and even with that the really bad storms are a nightmare to deal with. Tbf I only have a weenie blower because 80% of the time snow around here is 3-6” at worst, only the really bad storms bring 12+ and we haven’t had one of those in a while
Think about how much you'd want to be paid per hour and how many hours it would take to clear 14" of snow. Compare that to the $26.33 it cost this guy. Seems cheep to me.
Buffalo gets on average 56 days of snow with 10 of those being heavy snow.
26.33 one day isn’t bad but 400-600 dollars annually? That’s a different story. I suppose you could just limit use for heavy storms but that’s still 250-300. Average operating costs appear to be 300-800/yr which probably varies wildly based on geography
And this of course glosses over the gigantic cost of installing the driveway, which apparently can cost from 3,000-25,000 and averages 4800 for a small one car driveway and 12,500 for a 2 car driveway. The systems typically last 15-20 years. The good news from what I’ve read is that in a boiler system the pex tubing should last 40-50 years so the 20 year service life wouldn’t be as costly since you’d just be replacing the boiler/pump and not the entire system. The electric systems seem to last slightly longer (~25 years) but the cabling can fail and then the driveway needs to be torn up.
So if you have a small one car driveway that cost goes up $240 a year and $625 a year for a 2 car driveway, most of that being a bulk up front payment. And this assumes you have the resources liquid to make such a payment, if you’re financing those numbers probably go up since you’re paying interest.
Also environmental perspective: use a decent amount of power (though not as much as you’d think, about as much as a clothes dryer unless your driveway is huge) and tbf this can be mitigated by having clean sourced energy (eg a house with solar). Another concern is a hydro system developing a leak which would leak antifreeze into the soil (though if this happens you’re screwed bc the driveway generally has to be tore up)
I absolutely hate shoveling snow, I literally dropped $600 on a snowblower, but I can’t fathom investing in something like this unless you’re obscenely wealthy. Huge up front costs, pretty noticeable annual operating costs, costly appliance replacement cycles added onto my home, etc
That said if you were my neighbor and had one I’d probably be a little envious as I trudged through the snow looking at your clean ass driveway. Not enough to drop 4-12k + yearly fees on a new driveway, but enough be like “that must be fuckin nice”
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We have a narrow walkway of our pretty steep driveway heated. It came in clutch several times when we had black ice, but is also useful in snow.
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I installed this in residential doing construction back in the day. It's incredibly cost effective.
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written by someone who has never been to michigan.
fyi, Michigan is a peninsula surrounded by the great lakes… it has it’s own special snow….
(see also, lake effect snow).
Yeah, but it's not that special. Heated surfaces like this are ungodly expensive, both to construct and run.
Source: I priced doing this for my driveway.
west michigan IS that special. you either clear the roads, or you don’t use them.
and there are a lot of roads and a limited amount of plows… downtown in a larger city like GR, it makes perfect sense.
for the record, Lake Michigan generates it’s own clouds and snow, and the wind is constantly blowing west to east… it snows a lot more than you think… and very suddenly
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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).
Although general streets would not be my first choice (you should start with bridges where corrosion is even more of an issue)
When I lived in Grand Rapids in '08 I was told the big bridge across the river was heated. So they probably did start there.
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.
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Is it for snow?
No, it's against snow.
Why is this reply so damn funny to me?
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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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.
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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
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this post was submitted on 02 Jun 2025
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