St. John’s street cleaning doesn’t clean up
August 20th, 2009
A while back I wrote an post jesting that street cleaning in St. John’s is a big money scam for the city to make money off of your parked cars.
Last night there was street cleaning on the street (and there will be again tonight). Most people on the street continued to park as they normally do, unaware of the ticket they were about to receive.
It absolutely kills me that the city does not provide more notification about street cleaning. If everyone is still parked in their usual spots, the street isn’t going to get cleaned, so why bother?
No other reason I can think of than money.
From GregPike.ca: Street Cleaning – St. John’s Biggest Money-Making Scam
I also live in what’s classified as the ‘Downtown Core’ and have for the majority of my life. Every year, in late spring, the city sends out a brochure with a complete alphabetical listing of streets, noting when each one is scheduled to be cleaned throughout the summer. Each one is to be done 2-3 times and it even gives an explanation as to how this is determined. Generally, either the odd or even side will be done one night, with the opposite side to be done the next day in order to allow residents to have somewhere to park. The arrival of this brochure is an annual thing, much like receiving the schedule for your garbage pickup or the rules and regulations for snow clearing. Perhaps you missed out this year since you moved into the downtown area just recently. If you called the city (311) they’d probably send you a copy.
Thanks @Jane.
I only found out about the brochure after I moved in (I never received one) but now that I know about street cleaning I am on the St. John’s mailing list and I haven’t missed the cleaning since.
The purpose of my post is not to complain about me personally, but rather that my street is not cleaner as a result of the cleaning and that all of my neighbours have tickets. I realize that the onus is on the resident to know when and where they can park but the city could do a much better job at facilitating that process.
I understand what you mean. Even as a kid, I never got the purpose of street cleaning. Generally it seemed that a ridiculously loud machine came down my street at 4 in the morning to stir up some dirt and move it into the middle of the road. You can actually see a trail of dirt outlining where the machine has passed. Even if people did move their cars, the roads would still be a mess.
It is much the same with snow removal operations. They state that anyone who does not move their car will have it towed away. I have yet to ever see that happen on my street. They simply go around it which just makes the street a complete mess. When I lived in Montreal, they had the same policy and actually enforced. They hired a small fleet of tow trucks that would remove all remaining cars from the street before the plows and snowblowers went through. The streets ended being essentially snow free and the city made a fortune from the impound fees. St. John’s could really benefit from enforcing its policy that way.