There are manhole covers on the roads in most cities in China, and many manhole covers are built directly to the main road of the road. Why are there so many manhole covers on the road? Why not build it on the sidewalk? What departments are involved? How high would the cost be if it were all transferred to the sidewalk?

The manhole covers on municipal roads do have many problems. The uneven road surface damages vehicles, the damage and loss of manhole covers cause safety accidents and so on. The well covers on roads (including sidewalks and green belts) involve a variety of municipal pipelines: water supply, rainwater, sewage, electricity, telecommunications, heating, gas, etc. each pipeline may have multiple lines laid separately, and each pipeline is required to set various wells at a certain position.

In traditional road design, in order to reduce mutual interference and the function characteristics of the pipeline itself, different pipelines are distributed in different parts of the road, and the corresponding well covers will also appear in different parts of the road, but not all in the sidewalk or green belt.

Description according to different pipe types:

1 rainwater pipeline

It is used to collect and discharge rainwater from road pavement and rainwater collected by buildings along the line. Generally, for narrow roads, rainwater pipes are set in the middle of the road, and the pavement rainwater is collected and collected through the rainwater inlets on both sides of the road. In this case, the well cover must be in the middle of the road. For wider roads, rainwater pipes can also be set under the sidewalks or green belts on both sides, so that the well cover is beside the road. Of course, the cost of the pipeline is doubled.

2 sewage pipeline

It is used to collect the sewage discharged from the buildings along the line, so it will also decide whether to bury one pipe in the middle of the road or two pipes on both sides of the road according to the width of the road and the sewage discharge undertaken by the pipeline.

According to regulations, rainwater and sewage pipelines should be separated, but in some non urban planning areas or areas with backward infrastructure, there is no distinction between rainwater and sewage on the road (called rainwater sewage confluence), so there is only one pipeline. Since sewage and sewage are managed without pressure, a well needs to be set at every confluence, turning and certain distance, so the most commonly seen well cover is rainwater or sewage well cover.

3 water supply pipeline

The tap water pipeline is generally set beside the road in order to facilitate maintenance. Relatively speaking, the well cover of the water supply pipeline is less than that of rainwater and sewage.

4 power pipeline

There are two kinds of power pipelines: cable duct and cable trench. The setting requirements of well covers for high-voltage cables and low-voltage cables are also different. Some are ordinary circular well covers, and some are made into square well covers, which will be very large (covered with several precast concrete slabs). Unless it is forced, the well covers will not be placed on the carriageway, but can be placed on the roadside sidewalk or the central green belt.

5 communication pipeline

For the convenience of maintenance, it is usually placed in the sidewalk or green belt beside the road. However, since the communication pipelines with different attributes and different subjects will be built separately in different periods (or even often cut off the road and re laid), there is often more than one such pipeline. Different signs such as “China Mobile”, “China Telecom”, “national defense optical cable”, “cable TV” can also be seen on the well cover and sign pile.

6 thermal pipeline

There must be a large number of heating pipelines in the north central pipe warm city, which is similar to the water supply pipeline. The characteristic is that hot gas may be seen in the well in winter.

7 gas pipeline

In order to avoid being affected by the pressure of road vehicles, the gas pipeline will be arranged outside the roadway as far as possible, and there are few well covers, but there will be obvious identification piles or ground signboards.

The above pipelines also have various problems of intersection, elevation and slope coordination, mutual interference and avoidance of lines, construction and transformation in different periods, etc., resulting in the complexity of underground pipelines, and the pipelines are often placed under the carriageway.

To sum up, it is difficult to completely avoid well covers on the road! In particular, the reconstruction of existing roads has a huge stock, which is expensive, time-consuming and has great interference. Unless the overall road is reconstructed and expanded, the pipeline system will not be reconstructed alone.