Have there been those days this fall when you've gotten out of your car at night, looked up at the terrace sign and asked yourself if you'd be on the right side of the street after eight o'clock in the morning? How about those mornings when you've come out of the house, looked at your car and blurted out, "Oh man! They got me again."? Have you asked yourself what the reason is for the city not letting you park your car in front of your house or building during certain times of the day between 1 May and 15 November AND you're nowhere near the Square or the university?

If so, this article may be of help with these and other questions that you have about the City of Madison's street cleaning experiment. This fall marks the second anniversary of the City of Madison's expansion of street sweeping into the 2nd Alder District as a means of addressing the increasing amount of organic matter that was finding its way into area lakes via the streets and storm sewers. The original purpose of the the street cleaning that is done in our neighborhood and the 6th District (Marquette neighborhood), was to "impact those areas where street cleaning activity had been unable to get to the curb," according to Roger Goodwin of the City Streets Department. When asked how the program began in our neighborhood, Mr. Goodwin responded, "we looked for districts where cars could be removed from the street to facilitate sweeping." Another reason for choosing the Tenney-Lapham and Marquette neighborhoods was that unlike districts further out from the city center which have the storm runoff empty into settling ponds, our street runoff goes directly into the lakes.

Asked about differences the program has made, Mr. Goodwin said that the biggest difference was more debris collected per curb mile compared to other districts. "In an evaluation of the effects after the first year in the 6th District, we were able to more than double the amount of debris that was collected." While Goodwin feels that the prevention of this material from entering the lake should have an improvement on the lake's water quality, he said that there have been no water studies done to verify that.

In connection with the program evaluation done after year one, the Street's Department also conducted a survey of the effects of the sweeping activity. 40% said they were excited about what they were seeing happening with the streets, 40% thought it was a good program and 15% reported that they disliked the program mostly due to the inconvenience of the parking restrictions and the parking tickets.

In response to the question about plans for the program in the future, Mr. Goodwin said that he would like to expand the sweeping into the near west areas of the city. Again he repeated, "we want to impact those areas where we have been unable to previously get to the curb with our sweeping."

-David Mandehr


Back to the November/December Table of Contents