Currently, street sweeping in Oakcliffe is largely ineffective due to the large number cars illegally parked during the days that street sweeping takes place. As a community we are considering three options to improve street cleaning here in Oakcliffe:
1) According to the current street sweeping schedule, most of the streets of Oakcliffe are swept on the third Wednesday of each month, except for one street that is swept on the third Thursday of each month. If closer to half of the streets in Oakcliffe were cleaned on the third Thursday, this would provide more space for motorists to legally park their cars on the third Wednesday and these streets would be more effectively cleaned. Then on the night of the third Wednesday motorists could move their cars to to park on the streets that were cleaned that day and the Thursday streets could be cleaned. A parking inventory would need to be taken to determine which streets should be changed to this Thursday schedule.
2) Another idea to improve street cleaning in Oakcliffe is to better inform motorists of when street sweeping will take place. Ways that this could be done include posting flyers around the neighborhood the days before street sweeping will take place, putting balloons on cars the day before street sweeping, and even going door to door to assure that motorists move their cars. This idea can be done in conjunction with suggestion 1.
3) A third suggestion is just to request that the city of Pittsburgh not sweep the streets of Oakcliffe at all. In this case, there would be a mandate that residents be required to keep the street in front of their own homes clean. Because of the ineffectiveness of the current street sweeping, this is the only way that most of the streets are being cleaned. An argument against this is that street sweeping is a service that Oakcliffe residents are currently paying the city to provide, and that we will be getting fewer services for our tax dollars if this is eliminated.
