By Patrick Burles - @PatrickBurles on Twitter

City to ticket and tow vehicles if necessary during street sweeping

Apr 4, 2017 | 12:44 PM

LETHBRIDGE – Street sweeping will begin in Lethbridge next week (Apr. 10), and this year anyone parked in a zone marked by temporary NO PARKING signs can expect a $30 ticket and the possibility of being towed at their expense.

It comes after the City of Lethbridge launched a courtesy-tow pilot-project last year, in which they moved vehicles at no cost to the owner. Prior to the initiative, street sweepers often had to go around parked vehicles, meaning they weren’t fully cleaning city streets.

As Transportation Operations Manager Lee Perkins noted however, the pilot-project was short lived.

“It was a success in the fact that we actually cleaned curb-to-curb in one quadrant of the city, so in terms of environmental friendliness it was definitely a success, but it was a costly venture, it was in the neighbourhood of $20,000 to move cars last year,” explained Perkins. “Our hope was that by doing this residents would see the effort that we were putting into it and would help us a little bit, but as it went on it became very arduous and very difficult to maintain the schedule for the street sweepers, so we had to discontinue.”

For those concerned about being caught off guard by street sweeping and seeing a surprise ticket on their windshield, Perkins says they’ve taken a number of steps to ensure that doesn’t happen.

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“Communication has increased tenfold,” said Perkins. “People will get two notices, they’ll get a notice on their door approximately about a week prior to street sweeping, also, the night before street sweeping they’ll get a notice on the windshield of their car to remove their car, and of course, the NO PARKING signs will be out 12-hours prior to sweeping.”

He did note that in the event of rain or snow the night before they are scheduled to sweep a street, they will push the cleaning back.

Perkins stated that annual street sweeping not only reduces dust and makes city streets safer for cycling, walking and driving, but it is also important for our environment. He explained that by removing sand, dust and debris from roadways in the spring, we avoid having it washed into the Oldman River through the storm sewer system.

“The more vehicles that are out of the way, the faster that we can get this program done and move on,” Perkins concluded.