3 Types of Roads You Can Have on Your Property

Roads are an important consideration for landowners. Besides giving you access to your property, they’re also essential for getting around your land and facilitating the transport of trucks and machinery. In addition, many landowners rely on the strategic placement of private roads for drainage, food sourcing, recreation, and wildlife travel.

Whatever your reason for needing a road, you have a few options when it comes to the types of roads you can have on your property. And if you’re ready to make some road-related land improvements, you’ll want to make sure you know the basics around road types, purposes, and building and maintenance requirements. 

3 Types of Roads on Private Land

The main types of roads you’ll find on land include:

• Primary roads
• Secondary roads
• External roads

Primary Roads

This is a main thoroughfare for navigating around your property. As such, it needs to be well-suited to use in all types of weather, and should receive both a bulk of the traffic on your land and a bulk of your road maintenance efforts. 

Primary roads are continuous, meaning you can get from point A to point B without needing to take an offshoot. Depending on the size of your property, you may just have one primary road that serves as a point of entry connecting your land to an external public roadway. Or you may have several primary roads that are used to ensure year-round travel around the main parts of your property.

Secondary Roads

These roads branch off of primary roads, and generally lead to areas you need reliable access to but aren’t accessing regularly – for example: timber stores or equipment repair supplies. Because of this, secondary roads don’t need to be able to withstand as much heavy traffic as primary roads, and don’t require quite as much attention in terms of maintenance. When planning out secondary roads, be sure to account for both the types of vehicles you’ll be using on the road as well as whether the road will also need to be suitable for use by humans and/or wildlife. 

External Roads

External roads are public, and are the connecting links between your property and the town or city it resides in. When buying land, you may need to navigate the extension of an external road in order to access your property, or at least the creation of a new primary road off of an existing external corridor. And you want to be sure your land isn’t inconveniently divided by one or more external roads in your locality, since this can have a major impact on land use and privacy. 

Who Maintains Roads on Private Property?

The general rule of thumb is that external public roads are maintained by the municipality and internal primary and secondary roads are maintained by the landowner. However, in some rural and/or unincorporated townships it is the responsibility of owners to maintain certain external roads leading to their properties, either individually or as part of the neighboring community. 

They may be one of the less glamorous parts of a property, but roads are integral to how your land is used and valued. So when buying land, do your due diligence in figuring out what types of roads are currently present, what types of roads you may need to add in yourself, and how you intend to maintain your roadways.

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