We also have a private bridge over the second largest river in our county. If you think roads are expensive.
The bridge was built off-permit (no engineering records) in the 1950’s. It’s a good bridge, weathered the 150 year flood back in '82 which took out the town bridge. It’s not eternal though. We’ve done some serious repairs over the years, without pulling any permits. Just because we aren’t in Vermont doesn’t mean we aren’t intrepid. One of the sections is very slowly tilting . . .
If it failed we’d be looking at a half million dollars easy as pie. But probably more. There is no other access to our homes. The bridge is thirty feet above the river, no possibility of fording it.
From Romancing The Stone. It’s little remote control ramp that pops up so you can jump over the raging river when being chased by the Zolo and Columbian military police. I’d link the relevent bit of the movie, but youtube has failed me yet again.
I can’t remember where I read this, but in it the author remarked that people can’t understand why undeveloped countries don’t have paved roads, after all it must be so cheap, then pointed out that on average it costs about a million bucks a mile to pave a road and obviously in a larger undeveloped country that quickly gets into hundreds of millions of dollars.
I wasn’t kidding when I suggested that you should just buy your own bulldozer, tractor or road grader. My ex-inlaws have a historical farm in neighboring New Hampshire with several miles of dirt roads. They just regrade them every year. The equipment cost is not cheap but it is a whole lot less than paying someone to do it for you and it is a fun project to work on.
There has never been a case of a new person sitting in the seat of a bulldozer that didn’t smile. Used bulldozers or road graders are fairly inexpensive especially compared to the alternatives. Combine that with a $400 STIHL chainsaw and you might be able to finally declare yourself a true northern New Englander.
1983, I believe. And chick flick or not, it was great. And yes, can be discussed in cafe society to not hijack this thread. BUT the takeaway here is that my lupe’s escape suggestion was a hilariously awesome idea.
This was my first question also. The second was if it is a private road or public? The third is about civic regulations. My driveway needs to be able to handle a full sized fire truck. This means width, tree branch clearance, turn in and curves, and fully loaded weight.
This last is called “normalization of deviance”. You all get used to the idea the bridge tilting is no big deal. Then you get used to the idea that the bridge tilting some more is no big deal. etc.
One of the things that’s evident from any number of bridge and other structure failures is that unlike in Hollywood, the thing doesn’t get all teetery and groany for a few scenes before it lets go. In the real world it just sits there looking all innocent-like and how you’ve gotten used to it. Until the final vehicle loads it just wrong and it goes from easily being able to hold itself up for another decade to suddenly wanting to be all down in the river 1 second from now.
Gravity is a cast iron bitch. Like the song almost says: “She never gives up. She never gives in. She also never gives do-overs or takes a time-out.”
Get your tilting bridge professionally evaluated before you all kill somebody.
eh… OP has not returned. But - One way for folks to get this kind of improvement is to apply for a LID (Local Improvement District). Then their property is taxed to pay for it. This is generly applied to subdivisions and such. The road is dedicated to the County/city, and they then maintain it for the duration.
And as another poster said above, purchase some equipment, and maintain it yourself (gravel).
I own a rural property with about 1/2 mile of gravel road part of which runs down a moderate hill; maintenance requirements really depend how often & hard you use the road and how much precipitation you get. I’ll admit it can be fun, but it can actually eat up some significant chunks of time. Even though I’m the only one who uses the road (maybe 1-2x per month) and I’ll avoid using it when it’s really soft, I can’t imagine only having to re-grade once per year - it’s several times per year for me.
My equipment is very basic and fortunately didn’t cost me anything… a 40 year old 55HP industrial tractor pulling an 6’ blade. Even though equipment and fuel/maintenance costs next to nothing, the time adds up. Grading can’t be done at high speed, so you put the tractor in a lower gear and just chug along and accept that it will take you 10 minutes to get to the other end. And then back. And since you have a 6 foot blade on an angle and a 14 foot wide road, you’ll need to make 2 back and forth passes just to cover the whole road, then probably another to smooth out your imperfections. So you’re spending at least an hour out there every time.
What I’ve noticed is that even if you barely use the road you still have to grade it regularly through the spring/summer. Low or no traffic means the weed seeds that continually blown in and germinate start growing, scraping off patches of hardy weeds is harder then smoothing out ruts. So you end up spending one way or another… use the road constantly and regularly grade out the ruts that form, use it sparingly and slightly less regularly grade out the weeds that start growing along the edges and center line, or spend the money up front building the road to a higher standard so it doesn’t need as much grading in the first place, but still spend some time on the job anyway.
It’s enjoyable at first or if you just “get” to do it every now and then while someone else does it most of the other times, but when it’s solely your responsibility it tends to become just another mundane chore.