This is a street sweeper. The street sweeper is used to clean debris from streets. We employ a hybrid public-private model for our street sweeping operations. We own two street sweepers and we employ 4-5 more sweepers through private contractors. This allows us to start sweeping earlier, whenever we feel it’s right, but also supplements our efforts when the timing is right. We feel this mix of public and private effort works well to accomplish the job at hand, and is cost-effective as well.
Why do we bother to sweep the streets? Many people think we do this merely to make our streets look clean. Just like many people paint their houses merely to make them look nice. That’s what my wife would say. But the reason I paint my house is to preserve the physical integrity of the exterior siding. The reason we sweep the streets is really all about environmental protection.
Here’s why.
The chart below shows the tons of salt and sand that the City places on its streets each year during the winter months to create safer driving conditions for our residents and those who use our streets.
As you can see from this chart, our use of salt and sand is trending down from a high in 1996-97 of 7,975 total tons of material spread on our streets. This is an important trend to monitor because the size of street network has increased substantially since 1996-97 and the auto accident rate for winter related accidents has not substantially increased. Adding more streets should mean the use of more salt and sand, but it hasn’t. Using less salt and sand during this time period might be a cause of more accidents, but it hasn’t.
Conclusion: Our employees are smarter about their use of salt and sand.
Why is that important? It’s important because adding thousands of tons of salt and sand to the natural environment every year is not necessarily a good thing. In fact, it’s a bad thing. Sand fills up our storm sewer intakes and causes problems there. During spring rains, salt and sand drain into our creeks, rivers, and wetlands and cause pollution problems. That’s why we pick it up every spring with our street sweeping program.
So, the less we put down, the less we have to pick up. The less we use, the less we have to buy. We save money there. The less we have to pick up, the less we have to pay to have it picked up. We save money there too.
Being smarter with salt and sand can save our taxpayers a lot of money in the long run and be much better for our environment. A win-win outcome. That’s what we’re trying to achieve.
