Interesting question. I can’t speak so much for the highway maintenance, but I notice that sidewalk maintenance has changed drastically over the past few years. We are now back to salt and fine gravel, whereas there was a 2–3 year period during which they put down a green or blue solution to melt the ice. I have a feeling that they stopped in response to complaints. That stuff looked radioactive – and hearing reports that fracking waste is being used in some regions to melt ice on roads does not make anyone feel any safer about new substances being put down.
But the weirdest thing about that change is that it happened with no fanfare, and was halted with no fanfare. I have no idea what actually motivated it, and would have to do some serious digging to find out. It may just be that the substance didn’t work as well as they thought it might (although I seem to recall it was effective), or that it became too expensive.
Snow removal from roads is very quick and effective – in fact, the complaints I hear are in relation to the city working too hard to remove snow. We get a lot of snow here, so the city has to be on top of it, or everything would come to a grinding halt.