City sanitation is crucial in maintaining health standards. In turn, as you might imagine, most cities have thorough, well-thought out plans for keeping their streets clean. Philadelphia, however, much to its citizens chagrin, is an exception to this rule.
One of the main reasons explaining why Philadelphia, Pennsylvania lacks a street cleaning plan is because residents’ resistance to parking restrictions. It’s not that they do not want clean streets. The resistance is due in part to the fact that parking is difficult to obtain in the City of Brotherly Love, and street seeping reduces available parking spots even further.
As of recently, Philadelphia does have a street sweeping schedule, but it doesn’t actually seem to be working in spite of their $850,000 a year sweeping program. There are over forty main roads that are scheduled for night or dawn sweeping. Unfortunately, those routes are being cleaned no more than twenty-five percent of the time. Even though there are restrictions on parking that makes it really difficult for residents to have easy access to parking near their homes, the streets are simply not being cleaned. Interestingly enough, residents in these uncleaned areas are continually ticketed by the Philadelphia Parking Authority, further inciting rage among the people.
According to his 2015 campaign promise, Mayor Jim Kenney pledged to unroll a renewed street sweeping program. It has not lived up to the hype, however. Philadelphia does have what is known as the “Zero Waste and Litter Cabinet,” but this program does not focus on street sweeping efforts. It directs its attention to trash management and rules regarding dumping. As a result, the streets are largely neglected of a much-needed sweeping.
In response to the lack of street seeping, Philadelphia’s managing director, Brian Abernathy, and city sanitation representatives have come up with a plan to clean house without causing further frustration among residents. Mr. Abernathy explains why this new pilot program seems to be the answer to the city’s problems and the residents’ feelings of inconvenience; he stated that this new plan “is actually going to be a mixture of mechanical sweepers, as well as laborers who will blow trash into the street, where the sweepers will then pick it up, so folks don’t have to move their cars.”
Philadelphia should see this program hit the streets sometime in April with a specific focus on areas that have been identified by the “litter index,” which highlights areas that receive the least amount of street cleaning services. Abernathy is hopeful of this new program, stating, “we need to do a better job of keeping our streets clean.”