My ideas on street sweeping and trash collection

i had to address this issue first because my friends have heard me talk about it enough. my friend thereasa even wrote about the issue after hearing my rantings one too many times. ive written emails to my local rep and mayor with my ideas but didnt even receive the polite generic "thank you for contacting us" response.

so heres the issue in a nutshell...
in doing a little research on the city of bostons website i found out that most of the street sweeping (63%) is done prior to trash collection. while the trash collectors do a relatively fine job, there is inevitably going to be some trash that doesnt make it onto the truck and thus sits in the street for a week until street cleaning occurs again. so essentially the street is clean for 1 day out of the week.

i believe that if just a few changes were made to the scheduling of these two events during the week that the amount of time with clean streets could be maximized.

heres the breakdown of street sweeping..











scenario #1 - the easier solution
move trash collection day from wednesday to tuesday. even without changing the street sweeping schedule that means that 64% of the street sweeping occurs after trash collection.

scenario #2 - the more involved solution
very little street sweeping is done wed PM (8%) or thursday (1%). move trash collection to tuesday and all/some of tuesday street sweeping to wed PM or thursday. this would result in nearly 100% street sweeping occurring after trash collection.

so what are the potential pitfalls or problems?
* all the signage pertaining to street sweeping would need to be changed which potentially could be costly. however with a little planning it may just require moving a sign from one street to another, not creating a whole new sign.
* residents would get confused about when to put out the trash or when they need to move their cars. perhaps at first but then wouldnt everyone just learn the new pattern?


am i missing anything else as to why this is a bad idea? of course this becomes a moot point in a week as street cleaning ends november 30th.

i have further ideas involving the street sweeping schedule and snow removal....but lets wait for the winter to really get here before that conversation starts.