Winter comes early, not complaining had 4 plows go by already. We are on a bus route so that helps.
In my neighborhood during the storm last Febuary we had a single track through about 6" of snow until you reached the road’s that were top priority to the city, even then you might have to plow your way through.
My area of Ohio would do that every winter. Salt the heck out of the roads for what turned out to be 1/4 inch of snow.
If it was the first snowfall of the year, there were always tons of accidents because everyone forgot how to drive on snow from the previous year. Super slow-pokes convinced another 1 mph over 20 mph will spin them off the road and AWD drift-kings that forgot AWD doesn’t help the car slow down any faster!
Now that is flipped for me. When the summer rains (frog stranglers) come, the accidents happen because everyone forgot how to drive in the rain from last year.
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Last year, during a very light snow, I had the misfortune to be behind a woman in a Honda Oddity who drove at a steady 15 mph, and who braked before every slight curve in the road. By the time that she finally turned-off onto a side road, there must have been at least 20 cars in back of me.
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A lot of times for the heavy salt for the first storm is because there’s still usually a lot of moisture that turns to ice easily. They do the same here. And now before a storm approaches they put brine liquid on the highways.
I live on a dirt road…and then I have to travel about 2 miles on a paved road to the next town where they allow them to use salt. My town is salt free.
Sal Free, wow. Our town uses beet juice to reduce salt consumption. In ND they just used sand in the city, too cold for the salt to work, the snow did not turn into ice on the roads.
Several towns do this because most of our water is from Wells. Up to about 10 years ago Salt was allowed, but over the years more and more salt was ending up in peoples wells.
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Where I live it is wetlands conservation that drives minimal use of salt. There are signs letting drivers know that it is a salt free zone. Our town instructs the road agent and maintenance company to use as little salt as possible to keep roads passable. This leads to arguments between the people looking to minimize salt use and those that would like the road to be essentially dry all the time…
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We’re a small town and we don’t have a highway running through it so we don’t have any real traffic problems. Any town in any direction is bigger and more traffic issues so I can understand them siding on dryer highways over salted wells. You can at least filter the salt out of your well.
It’s not like the old days. The new salt trucks are pretty high tech, just like tractors. They have various road sensors and are pretty precise about what to put on the road depending on conditions. I don’t know what they cost now. Quarter inch of snow or four inches can be equally hazardous to drive on.
One other thing our town does to cut salt use is to only salt the stop sign area on side streets.
Around here they drive 20+ over the limit in the summer, and 10-15 over the limit when it’s snowy (with the resultant spins into ditches). But if it rains, they slow to well under the speed limit. It’s baffling.
I wish they would move farther away from salting the roads. I’d be happy to pay more in taxes to get the non-salt products instead. Not only is it bad for the environment - the salt goes into the storm sewers and gets dumped in lakes and rivers where freshwater fish have a difficult time of it - but it’s also bad for my cars.
I always get jealous when we go to the Caribbean via Florida. We’ll spend a day or two in Orlando or Ft. Lauderdale, and walk around the city. I regularly see cars from the 80’s and older with excellent bodies. Meanwhile in my state, cars less than 10 years old often show signs of rust. It’s very annoying.
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Well, I live in a small town. The concern has never been salted wells. The ground does a pretty good job filtering out salt, wells are located pretty far back from roadways and they are not placed in areas that are prone to runoff or flooding. The concern is primarily for surface water that is contaminated by runoff affecting the ecosystem. Heck, when I lived in MA, our city municipal supply came from a surface reservoir and they salted the roads like there was no tomorrow. Salt has a very direct and adverse effect on marshland which we have a lot of in town. Over half my land is a designated wetland or protected buffer zone for wetland. In spite of the effects, there are people in town that are either ignorant of the situation or apathetic to it in favor of their convenience to travel without any care 365 days a year…
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My well is 20’ from the road…but at least it’s 500’ down. Homes across the street their wells are in their back yard.
Some wells are not very deep (less then 20’), so they might have problems if near a road or run-off. I’m more worried about failed septic systems. Most homes near me are far less then 25 years old and are on 2+ acres…so hopefully my well won’t be easily affected if someones septic system fails.
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We ended up going from a 50’ well to a 200’ well. New location is 25’ off the roadway in a low spot, We usually drink bottled water, but also have a water softener at the cabins. No prolems so far.
Road Salt isn’t my problem with my water.
My water contains Magnesium which I need a water softener for. The water softener basically replaces the Magnesium Chloride with Sodium Chloride. Magnesium is really bad for porcelain like your sinks and toilet.
Then the water goes through a system to remove the Radon.
Then finally there’s the Reverse Osmosis system to remove the arsenic.
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Iron is our big problem. Stains the fixtures.
But roached clearcoat…
Re-painting is easier than rust repair! 
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They might have altered it some now but in the metro at any rate the MNDOT policy was always bare roads. They go 12/12 shifts doing whatever necessary to make the roads bare. It’s always a tug of war and there will always be groups that don’t like what is being done, but for thousands of drivers and millions of miles in expensive transportation pods, bare roads are appreciated.
Some groups were worried about wildlife habitat, so no mowing of ditches. Of course that caused a lot of animals close to the road that didn’t look both ways first before crossing. Then it’s the pathway for the butterflies so they can find a way south. Yeah we raise them too even though some domestic versions don’t have that built in sense to go south and end up dead. We need roads just like houses and people like to arrive home in one piece. Hats off to those folks that try and clear the roads in bad weather. If you are gonna live up here, just buy a plastic car or add a little more to the budget for replacement. It’s good for the economy anyway.