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Post by kevlar on Mar 14, 2024 8:12:30 GMT -6
What kind of shape is everyone’s roads in this year? We had a thaw a few weeks ago and all the municipal roads were horrendous. They froze back up again but now it’s starting to melt some every day, earlier than usual, but they are in bad shape. Have heard rumours that the RM is considering a heavy truck ban on some roads. Every year they are getting worse and worse, after a rain in the summer they are dangerous. Doesn’t help that they don’t clear the snow off, after the last snow there was about 3-4 inches left on the road after they plowed it, and never winged the snow off the shoulder. I’ve been scraping all the built up snow at the end of the farm’s lane, probably had close to 6 inches of hard pack snow and ice, it’s not like that everywhere but a lot of the intersections are solid ice.
I think a big part of the problem is the gravel being used, years ago they used 1.25 screened gravel, now everything is 3/4 inch crushed, I just don’t think the smaller stuff holds up to the traffic, especially heavy traffic. I was going to run the idea by the councillor about maybe trying 1 or 1.25 inch crushed gravel, might be harder on windshields but think the roads would benefit.
A little more effort by the operators would go a long way as well, but it’s hard to find people who want the job.
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Post by OptimallyDismal on Mar 14, 2024 11:36:39 GMT -6
They are bad here too,
The PR's are the worst, they even closed one a few weeks ago during the big thaw, it got chewed up pretty bad by some grain trucks.
A few years ago it had some really bad spots that they dumped crushed asphalt on that seemed to work better than the gravel. It has since been graded into oblivion.
The municipal roads are not as bad, but a few heavy trucks would fix that in a hurry. As usual the RM's are cheap with the gravel, putting a thin skim on and then grading it into the ditch. The road past us didn't get any gravel last year, it is greasy clay when wet.
As far as the operators go, I see in some European countries they are training farmers to run graders and plows because they can't get workers. I mentioned that to our RM a couple of years ago when they couldn't get anyone. I think if they had a trained pool of operators that they would run as required without any one person having the burden of a full time job. As well they could (and should) pay the people when the work, sort of a paid volunteer (which will be a thing in the near future for a lot of things I think).
I am not sure of the insurance implications etc either, but the pay aspect would make them an employee so that should solve those problems, and probably save money overall.
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Post by kevlar on Mar 14, 2024 12:15:36 GMT -6
I’ve thought of that too, have a handful of local people running the grader in the winter, would save on labour as sometimes there isn’t anything to do for weeks at a time but you have to pay an employee to look busy. Maybe tender out road grading in the summer, that way have a business that wants to do their best. There’s times here I wish they would just leave stuff alone because it’s worse after they’re done. But it sounds like every municipality is having a hard time keeping workers. I know at the start of winter the RM east of me and north of you didn’t have anyone working as they had both quit.
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Post by serffarmer on Mar 14, 2024 19:37:20 GMT -6
Roads are in terrible shape here also. Same reasons as above. Very poor quality gravel this past year. Extremely poor job of snow plowing after the snow we had a while back is biting them in the ass big time now. 4x4 needed in lots of places as the snow melts straight into the road. Glad I’m not moving grain right now. In all honesty should prob have bans on.
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Post by slipclutch on Mar 14, 2024 20:09:40 GMT -6
Roads are crap here too. Where the RM put dust prohibiter on the last couple of years the road is nice and hard. Where they didn’t it’s very soft and the mud is coming through. It would probably pay on the long run to put dust prohibiter on everywhere.
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Post by cptusa on Mar 14, 2024 20:10:41 GMT -6
Perfect. Absolutely perfect. I could not ask for better road conditions. Of course I'm likely two weeks from hauling water to cows in a yard because the crick is going to stagnate which I've only seen dry up twice... in August.
We are in major trouble moisture wise here.
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Post by shmiffy on Mar 16, 2024 21:09:46 GMT -6
I wouldn’t ask for bigger gravel. Rm here used big stuff. Cars and vans take a shit kicking. Tires get chewed up fast. Graders in the rm I live in like to bounce. Other than that they are pretty good.
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Post by kevlar on Mar 16, 2024 21:25:29 GMT -6
 lifeserveThis is just one section, they have closed the road to only local traffic. There’s miles and miles like this. I don’t see them being great before seeding begins, any kind of rain and they will look like this again. |
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Post by OptimallyDismal on Mar 16, 2024 21:45:12 GMT -6
That looks about right, with the colder temperature it has freeze dried a bit so if there is a path pounded through it is going to be frozen in for a few days now!
Tough going for cars though, it will clean off those air dams and anything else underneath pretty quick.
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Post by northernfarmer on Mar 16, 2024 22:02:36 GMT -6
It almost looks like they graded that curve into a speed curve and what is right in front of you looks lower in the middle than to the sides. It does not look to the perspective of a photo to have proper drainage. Hard to tell about the gravel, it sort of looks like a high concentration of sand and maybe a bit of dirt or clay mixed in there. I know here on roads they grade more the gravel tends to disappear and leaving behind too fine of a product on top and its too much like a dusty sand like flour they are grading back and forth, there is no proper body to it and it takes hardly any rain to turn that type of material into a mush. Its like they should spread a high concentration of a finer crush as per 5/8 as even 3/4 can start to get on the large side ( some 3/4 is like 1 inch ). And it all starts from building a shitty base and not enough gravel early on in a roads life and I understand that roads years back got built by burying the soil as they just dug ditches and plunked that on top of the soil in the center and wala there's your road and that buried soil can haunt the road forever. When a road does not have a proper crown its just asking to get water logged as the rains sink in rather than a lot of it running off to the sides.
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Post by meskie on Mar 16, 2024 23:32:15 GMT -6
No ditch. No crown. No gravel. Too wide of road and trees growing right up to the edge. Makes me feel pretty good about the roads around here.
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Post by OptimallyDismal on Mar 17, 2024 6:43:51 GMT -6
You guys are right, also when we have a mushy spot, if they do it right and dig it out, then fill and pack the repair, there is usually a bunch of trees, barbed wire, fence posts, and whatever else was along the side of the road that they pushed in figuring they would never see it again.
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Post by Oatking on Mar 17, 2024 7:54:53 GMT -6
You guys are right, also when we have a mushy spot, if they do it right and dig it out, then fill and pack the repair, there is usually a bunch of trees, barbed wire, fence posts, and whatever else was along the side of the road that they pushed in figuring they would never see it again. After the flood of 2022 , the government of Manitoba and local rms hired contractors to reslope the roads. Most have a crown now but the once flat roads which you could easily pass a tandem on are now very narrow and a steep drop off! However , I can’t complain about the amount of drainage we got . I wonder what the final tally of flood repairs were? I can tell already spring runoff is way better this year! |
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Post by kevlar on Mar 17, 2024 8:35:34 GMT -6
No ditch. No crown. No gravel. Too wide of road and trees growing right up to the edge. Makes me feel pretty good about the roads around here. Actually there is about a 15 foot ditch on the left side of that picture and a 5 foot ditch on the other. This is a curve that comes down into the valley. The road has gotten flat with no crown and the edges of the grass has gotten higher than the road so water runs right down the road and washes the gravel away. This is where two RMs meet on a PR road, they both take turns grading the hill but it’s always solid washboard and potholes. This whole road is terribly rough all year. Seems like all RMs try to bring that crap up off the shoulders thinking it’s gravel but it’s just silt and sod, they use three point disk , I wish someone would run over it. We have some of those soft spots as well but most of problems are just the road surface from years of neglect and improper maintenance. The RM has pumped huge amounts of money into the new hockey rink in town and done so at the expense of the roads. I’ve noticed in the southern parts of the province how every year there is work done on cleaning ditches out, has never happened here so now we have water issues in the spring because of it. The Highway Department here is broke, likely the same everywhere. They put nothing into the PR roads, hardly even mow the ditches anymore. |
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Post by OptimallyDismal on Mar 17, 2024 8:46:49 GMT -6
It seems here the PR work is all contractors, so they cheap out as much as they can on top of the low budget highways seems to have.
The RM here does the drag the crap off the shoulders too so it is a bunch of mud and sod that gets spread over the road and if it rains it is soupy mud.
I am hearing that Hydro is charging for tree removal on the roadsides so that might have them going back to spraying the ditches to control the tree growth like they used to!
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