An observation about the streets in every city I've lived:

When they are designed, there are manholes at regular intervals. However, they are placed such that a vehicle, if properly driven down the center of the lane, will hit every one of them. After wear and road surfacing, they don't stay even with the road surface for long. It is like constantly driving over potholes.

Why are they positioned there instead of the center, where they won't be driven on?

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Common sense isn't so common.

We have a street here that has so many manholes in it, and they're like you say, all over the place. I like to pretend I'm piloting a B-24 through flak bursts. Some I miss, some I hit.

Street right of ways are similar to telephone poles. There are several different utilities that are using the same general area and "Their" area is predetermined.

I have watched the City of Columbus, send notices to all the utilities that "In 3 years" such and such road will be redone and widened. Have all your underground work scheduled to be done before this date! Then as soon as the project is complete, the Water or Sewer Departments will trench the street and install a new line. I understand emergency repairs, but dig up a brand new street for miles to install an additional (or larger) line! How dumb is that?!?!

Now one of the oldest set of sewers in town is in German Village. The sewers are from the 1840's to 1880's and are hand laid brick (usually big enough to walk upright in. A new building of any type must be tied in. Do they use a core saw to drill a nice round hole? NO! Do they use a aggragrit saw to cut a nice neat square hole? NO! They beat on it with a sledge hammer until it breaks! Sometimes that means a jagged hole a little bigger than the need and sometimes hundreds of feet collapse, usually to the next intersection-in both directions! Dumb! Dumb! Dumb!
Now you start to see why the brick streets are as rough as wash boards!

Ivan

Perhaps the Twin Cities Met Council will take the manhole locations into consideration as they plan to remove existing vehicle lanes to add bike lanes and widen sidewalks. (Sarcasm)

I had a contract laying out high pressure gas mains for the utility LILCO on Long Island NY. Before that could be accomplished, a detailed subsurface survey had to be completed, utilizing numerous reference assets and onsite physical surveys to determine the route and depth of all buried utilities.
Once an accurate survey of the subsurface is created, a route is created within the right-of-way, that avoids interference with utilities already in place.
Between the trunk and distribution runs of water, sewer, road drainage, gas, telephone, fiber-optic, and cable TV, the choices of a clear route through these networks are limited, so you go where there is room. I'll add that in the midst of this buried geometry dance, the location of painted lines on the road surface, which often move, is given little if any consideration.
Bear in mind also, that when your DOT has roadway improvement projects that adjust roadway route or grade, the sub-surface utilities must also reroute, necessitating more manholes at the divergence.

As for repaved roads leaving deep depressions at manholes, easy to attach add-on extension collars are available to keep the cover level with the surface. This photo shows the results of recent repaving of my block in Brooklyn. A huge chipper removed the old asphalt, after which a truck dropped off extension collars at each manhole. A crew followed and installed the extension collars, and this is the final smooth result as the crew moved on to the next block.

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Slava Ukraini!

I just wish I had more paved roads than dirt.

Depressed manholes are not as big of concern as a cow moose and her calf!
Every neighborhood has problems!

Ivan

You might want to rethink that. More paved roads means more encroachment by "civilization". Be careful what you wish for.

Post 4;

Don't you just love how the City plans work.........

They make a two lane leading up to a school zone one lane and yes, add a bike lane to boot.

Now that main street with a lot of traffic is bottled up and has to go 15 mph in the school zone all week, plus miss the manholes .

Got to love it.

Manholes? I'd be happy if the county would grade the gravel more often so it wouldn't be a wash board.....

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SWHF #595

I have always wondered why after a road is resurface or new, a week after they have to dig up part of it for some reason ? Could they plan better and dig before they pave?

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age is just a number

In my county, the County Engineer for the past 25+ years was very practical and seemed to have a plan for upgrades that rarely resulted in them having to reopen a new pavement. Within the last couple years he retired and a new Engineer took over and we'll just have to see. The Ohio Department of Transportation is another story. They are continually repaving rural state routes and then going back tearing the new pavement up to replace the culverts that run underneath. Ruins the weather resistance of the new pavement and is a huge waste of tax payer money.

Properly coordinating the installation of utilities in a high-rise building under construction is an art form, and that is when requirements are known in advance and all parties involved are profiting from the exercise.

There are myriad reasons why all roadway right-of-way utilities don't coordinate upgrades simultaneously. That said, the Township of Smithtown on Long Island would not give permission to touch any of their Depression-era roadway built by the WPA (Works Progress Administration). These 90 year-old roads are still in excellent condition, and rabidly protected by the local government. All WPA road crossings there are Jacked or Directionally Drilled.

Sounds like Mpls/St Paul


By the way you can no longer use Gender specific words


No more Man Hole it is now "maintenance hole" and "human effort" or "workforce."


Hey its true in Berkley!

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Still Running Against the Wind

I worked all my life for a utility co. and this is a very good explanation of why manholes are all over the road. People that are not associated with utilities don't have any idea and would be amazed at what is buried under roads.
One of the worst I remember was enlarging an old existing manhole. We couldn't make it as large as the drawing because there wasn't enough space between existing utilities so the size changed. We were bringing in nine, 4 in. conduits. They should have been 3 wide and 3 high all together. Because of existing utilities we had to have the conduit come in at 3 different openings. The book of rules don't cover all the "what ifs" and many times we just had to do the best we could with we had. Larry

You betcha.

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Expect the unexpected