Why Is Snowplowing Still a Thing? – Motherboard

The Motherboard article has this written:

> Check out this paper from researchers at Iowa State University for a deep dive into the CO2 footprint of heated pavement versus traditional snow removal. Spoiler: Heated pavement is better, even when heating systems are powered by coal.

This got me curious given how counter-intuitive it seemed. I opened the paper itself ( https://lib.dr.iastate.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1007&... ) and did a string search of "maintenance" and found this gem:

> METHODOLOGY AND DATA SOURCE This study only considers the operation phases of both traditional and heated pavement snow removal systems, which means that construction, maintenance, and rehabilitation phases are not included in the system boundaries

So basically they ignore the costs in building and then maintaining the system. Also the paper seems to be highly focused on airports. Presumably this simplifies the problem greatly.

Regardless the author of the article seems to have found the title of a paper and then whipped up an article without every really thinking about things.

Ignoring all that, it is of course true that salt is very damaging to both infrastructure and the environment. Personally I really like how Sweden does it (at least Stockholm and other relatively dense areas) and just throws gravel on top of the snow. I've heard people complain, but I personally love it. It's like having crampons on the ground so you don't have to put them on your shoes. I run outside most of the winter and rarely wear spikes.

This article isn't that great. The idea of heated surfaces is not a new one. However, it doesn't exist widespread because it is not practical at all.

I live in an area of NY where it is not unheard of to get a foot of snow every few hours for several hours. You can wake up with 4ft on the ground. No heated surfaces is ever going to take care of this amount of snow.

I do not live in a region with lots of snow or ice. Would there be any concern about melting the closest 'layer' of snow over pavement and creating a snow 'shell' over the road? If an area is getting sufficient ice precipitation I wonder if such a system could keep up and what the dangers would be of a road that was not salted/sanded in this condition.

End of the article:

> Sounds good to us. BRB moving to Holland.

Journalism sure has changed a lot in my time. It's fascinating.

Not that I expect anyone at VICE to understand basic physics let alone thermodynamics, but the amount of energy and labor necessary to heat all city streets would surely surpass $1B anywhere in the U.S. ...

I don't know about other cities in North America but heated sidewalks would work only for a very small area in the city I live in and is covered by at provincial, federal and each municipalities jurisdiction. The entire are that would need to be done to stop snow ploughs being needed is almost 100 square kilometers. Most of the city is laid out in a fairly spread out way almost entirely the opposite of the European cities and small American towns used in the example. The cost to implement a heated road and sidewalk system here would be ridiculous and the city already seems to leave their roads more unmaintained than they should anyway.

I just don't see such a system of water heated roads being feasible in North America not the the parts of it I've seen have been designed, without drastically rebuilding most cities.

Not to mention we get a lot of snow and already have flooding problems in the city when there's heavy rain or big snow melts. This just changes things to a different problem.