eli5 why are manhole covers in the middle of the road and not on the sidewalk?
In: 622
Because they are used to access utilities like sewers or gas lines, and those are located in the middle of the road.
They aren’t ALWAYS in the middle of the road, sometimes they might be under the sidewalk. But a lot of the time they are in the middle of the road because this keeps them an equal distance from the houses on each side of the road which all need to use those utilities. Also, these are publicly owned services which city workers may need to access or even dig up for repairs. It is best if they don’t need to go onto or damage people’s private property to do this, and a sewer under a sidewalk for example would either be very close or actually overlap with people’s buildings or front yards.
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