In Oakland County the answer depends on whether you live in a city, a township or on a private road — and the three answers are not variations of each other.
Work is carried out by an independent snow removal operator under their own company name and insurance. This site arranges the introduction and clears nothing itself.
| Jurisdiction | Mileage | What it covers |
|---|---|---|
| MDOT | 310 miles | Everything with a letter in its name — I-75, I-696, M-1 (Woodward), M-5, M-24, US-24 (Telegraph). RCOC maintains these under contract. |
| RCOC | 2,600 miles | The largest county road system in Michigan, second in size only to the state highway system. Includes more than 750 miles of gravel road, and every road in every township. |
| Cities and villages | about 2,700 miles | All neighborhood and subdivision streets inside municipal boundaries. Major streets are usually split between the community and RCOC. |
| Private | not published | Everything else. No public agency plows it at any depth. |
RCOC also maintains roughly 90 percent of all traffic signals in the county, including state highway and city street signals.
This surprises almost everyone who moves from a city into a township here. Orion Township states it directly: “Townships in Michigan have no jurisdiction over roads.” RCOC maintains all public roads in a township, subdivision streets included, and a township board has no authority to plow them faster by deciding to.
The funding explains the service level better than any complaint does. RCOC is not part of Oakland County general government — it is a legally separate entity, receives no property tax for road maintenance, and takes the bulk of its operating funds from the state. It runs a budget over $90 million with 548 employees, the same number it had in 1974, and by Orion Township’s account receives on average $2,000 to $3,000 per mile of subdivision street per year in state road funding. Two to three thousand dollars a mile does not buy a fast response to a four-inch snow.
A modification to Michigan’s Act 51 in the late 1960s let Bloomfield Township assume surface maintenance of its own subdivision roads, funded by a dedicated one-mill millage. The township plows more than 200 miles of subdivision road across twelve service areas. RCOC keeps legal jurisdiction and handles thoroughfares, signage and drainage.
It is the only arrangement of its kind in the county. A Bloomfield Township resident’s experience of winter does not generalize to Orion, West Bloomfield or Commerce, and advice traded between neighbors across that boundary is usually wrong.
Bloomfield Township also runs a snow emergency ordinance adopted in February 2006: during a declared emergency, parking is prohibited on publicly maintained streets, residents have six hours from the declaration to move vehicles, and fines run up to $100 plus towing.
In nearly every city and village here, jurisdiction over the major streets is divided between the community and RCOC, which is why a city truck will pass the end of your street without turning into it.
RCOC publishes road jurisdiction maps by county quadrant and an Act 51 certification map broken down by community. Independence Township publishes an interactive map identifying public versus private roads within the township, which is the most useful single artifact of its kind in the county.
If none of those settles it, the practical test is simple: if no public truck has ever turned onto your road, it is private, and your options are an association contract, a cost-sharing arrangement with the neighbors, or the Act 139 special assessment route. What to do about a private road.
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Oakland County