Getting a shared road treated: a guide for neighbors and road associations

Who is responsible for a private road in Oregon

If your shared road runs over an easement (a right of way across someone else's land), Oregon's rules for keeping it up are in ORS 105.170 to 105.185.¹ The heart of them is short. Here it is in plain words.

• Everyone with a right to use it maintains it. "The holders of an interest in any easement shall maintain the easement in repair." That includes the landowner if they use it too.¹
• An agreement decides the split first. The cost is shared under any agreement the holders made, or the recorded document that created the easement.¹
• With no agreement, cost follows use. Each holder pays a share in proportion to how much they use the easement. How often they use it and the size and weight of their vehicles both count.¹
• Damage you cause is yours. A holder responsible for damage through negligence or abnormal use repairs it at their own expense.¹

Do you have a road maintenance agreement?

Check this before the neighbor meeting. ORS 105.175 says a maintenance agreement, or a memorandum of it, "shall be recorded in the real property records of the county in which the easement is located," so look in your property records or ask your title company. The statute adds that an unrecorded agreement still binds the people who made it and anyone with actual notice of it.¹

In Jackson County, some local access roads are dedicated ways, which come with a formal maintenance agreement. The county does not hold or administer those agreements, so the neighbors need their own copy.³

Ways neighbors split the cost

There's no single right way, and I won't pick one for you. These are the options roads use:

• By the agreement. If your road has one, it decides.
• Equal shares. One quote divided by the households. Simple, and easy to explain at a meeting.
• By distance used. Oregon's statute offers a way to measure use. You divide each holder's normal usage distance by the total of everyone's, and share by those percentages.¹ A house at the far end pays more than one near the county road.
• By use and vehicles. Weighting heavier or more frequent users, such as a farm running trucks, follows the factors the statute names.
• By frontage. Shares set by how much of the road runs along each property.

Got a total from a quote? Work out each share below. Nothing you type is sent anywhere.

A neighbor-meeting checklist

Bring these to the meeting, or put them in the group text:

1. Where the treatment should start and stop, and the length (our quote form can measure it on a satellite map).
2. How many households use the road, and who else does, like a farm, a business or delivery trucks.
3. Whether the road has a recorded maintenance agreement, and what it says about costs.
4. Whether the road needs grading or gravel first.
5. Which way of splitting the cost you will use.
6. One contact, the person who books it and talks to us.
7. When you want it done. See when to apply dust control.

Getting one quote for the whole road

Whoever has the time, or the association treasurer, gives me a call or sends the road. I'll need where it starts and stops, and how many households are on it. We quote the whole road as one job, with one appointment, so nobody has to line up separate jobs house by house. On the day, we pre-wet the road with water, then I spray the lignin, and the neighbors can drive on it right away. It's built to last the season.

What moves the number is covered in what sets the cost, and how we work on shared roads is on our private road and road association page.

If a neighbor won't pay their share

Nobody likes this part, but it helps to know where you stand. ORS 105.180 lets the other holders bring a civil action against a holder who fails to maintain the easement as an agreement requires, or who, with no agreement, fails to pay their proportion of the cost after a demand in writing. Any holder can also apply to the court to appoint an impartial arbitrator to apportion the cost.¹ Again, this is not legal advice. Talk to an attorney before you go down that road.

In Josephine County

Josephine County is direct about local access roads. "People who live on the road are responsible for its maintenance," it says, and the county will not do the work. It adds that problems between property owners on those roads are civil matters the owners have to settle themselves.² Its public works FAQ doesn't describe a dust program, so on a shared road there, getting the neighbors together is how it gets done. Not sure what kind of road you're on? See county road or private road?