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Comment by notlukesky | Hacker News Reader

The convenience of the location is great. Lots of salt is needed to deice all the roads in the Detroit/Michigan area. The main purpose of the salt there is for deicing. Saves a bunch on transport costs.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detroit_salt_mine

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And ruins the vehicles that the nearby auto industry produces. Planned obsolescence in an ecosystem format.

I don’t see what other option there is if people want to be able to drive around in below freezing weather and precipitation.

Here in Sweden tiny sharp rocks, known as grit, are thrown on top of the forming ice. Works wonders

Interesting! Can you link to any examples / info about grit? Maybe an amazon product page or something too?

It's probably just sand.

I don’t think it is.

That might be because salt loses effectiveness below -10C

I've seen sand and gravel used a lot.

Once you get far enough north in Michigan, like the Upper Peninsula, they switch from salt to sand for the most part. It gets so cold up there so regularly, salt doesn't work as well.

The same salt seam is mined underneath Lake Erie near Cleveland as well. Here are some photos: https://photos.clevescene.com/33468-2/

And it’s on the Great Lakes for shipping cheaply.

Salt has a sweet-spot where it works. Too warm and you don’t need it. Too cold and salty water freezes anyway.

The rust belt is just right for using salt.

Maybe that’s also why it’s called the rust belt.

It's all the old steel-related industry mostly.

Road salt destroys cars, but hey, Make Detroit Great Again (MDGA)!

The drawback with sand is that it doesn't dissolve in water, so silts everything up.

> (MADA)

Make America Detroit Again?

Next Robocop reboot?

Faster degradation of cars on the road might be an upside for Detroit.

What is the alternative? Roads that become icy probably destroy cars as well, although in a more pinpoint kind of way. At least road salt doesn't cause a lot of fatalities.

Electric coils under the pavement to keep the surface temperature above freezing. Unfortunately most cities can't afford it, least of all Detroit.

Which cities use that technology?

Holland, Michigan for one:

https://www.mlive.com/business/west-michigan/2016/02/why_hol...

As the article states, this system uses waste heat from a power plant transported via water.

That system is pretty tiny though. It just covers the main strip downtown. Maybe 6 blocks.

As a sibling points out, these systems use process heat, not electricity. U of M has a steam tunnel system in Ann Arbor, which I believe only covers sidewalks, not roads.

Surely that's only workable for inside cities. I can't imagine a highway having a coil for hundreds of miles.

Sand, for traction, is usually the alternative. It's most commonly used in climates where it gets too cold for salt to be useful.

It does, but skidding off the road destroys them too.

And throwing sand down really doesn't do much.

Across the lake in Wisconsin we reuse the leftover brine from the cheese industry. Its more effective and more effective per unit used than straight salt.

Takes the freezing point down to 0°F or lower. Combine that with how dry it gets here in the winter and you get a powerful combination of melting and sublimation.

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