Snow removal in Troy, where larger colonials with side-entry garages sit on subdivision streets the city plows on its own schedule.
The operator who clears a Troy driveway is an independent company carrying its own insurance; this site only makes the introduction.
Much of Troy was built from the late 1960s through the 1990s as subdivisions of two-story colonials and quad-levels with attached, often side-entry, garages. The drives are wider and longer than in the older cities to the south, and the turn in front of a side-entry garage is where most of the hand finishing happens.
Troy also has a large condominium stock, where the association usually contracts the clearing. For a detached house, agree on how the operator handles the apron after the city plow has been through, since that ridge is left to the homeowner.
The sidewalk rules comparison puts Troy alongside its neighbors, and the cost page shows where a wide two-car drive usually lands.
Troy is the clearest illustration in the county of the four-inch gap. The city says plainly that it lacks “enough hours, staff, money and equipment” to clear the windrows its plows leave across driveway approaches, and that property owners should expect them. Below four inches nothing comes down a subdivision street at all. With 250 miles of local road and 88,733 residents, that is a very large number of households whose winter is entirely their own problem for most of the storms in a season. What to do about the berm.
Troy does not plow a residential street until snow exceeds four inches. Completion targets after that run 24 hours from storm end for 4 to 8 inches, 36 hours for 8 to 12, and 48 hours above 12. The city maintains 250 miles of local subdivision road and runs six priority classes, with major roads carrying a 12-hour bare-pavement target and sidewalks, parks and cemeteries last. Private roads are not plowed by the city at all.
Snow over two inches deep plus all ice must be cleared from the adjacent public sidewalk within 24 hours after the snow event ends. There is a real exemption: single and two-family homes on non-major streets are exempt from side and rear-yard sidewalks abutting the listed thoroughfares — Adams, Beach, Big Beaver, Coolidge, Crooks, Dequindre, Fourteen Mile, John R, Livernois, Long Lake, Maple, Northfield Parkway, Rochester, South Boulevard, Square Lake, Stephenson and Wattles. No dollar penalty is published.
Troy is the county’s post-war and later suburban stock at scale — brick ranches through the older sections, then 1970s to 1990s colonials and quad-levels, on concrete driveways with attached garages. 88,733 residents, 2.63 people per household, 73.3% owner-occupied.
Northfield Hills is the marquee example and unusually well documented: begun in 1957, developed by Chrysler Realty with the planned neighborhood district designed by architect Minoru Yamasaki, 1,650 acres planned for 1,600 homes and 2,400 townhouses, bounded by Square Lake and Long Lake Roads and by Crooks Road and Coolidge Highway. Its houses sit on curvilinear roads laid out to preserve open space, woodlots and small lakes — which is lovely, and which means long frontages and awkward approaches in February.
Troy states on the record that clearing the ridge a city or county plow leaves across the end of a driveway is the homeowner’s job. Ask any operator whether a return pass for it is in the price. Plow berms and driveway aprons.
Nearby: Bloomfield Hills · Bloomfield Township · Novi · Rochester Hills · all service areas
Give the street, the shape of the drive and any walks or steps, and say whether the lot sits on a corner.
Call (248) 494-7362 Get a Seasonal Quote
Oakland County