TRAFFIC AFFECTS SWEEPER ROUTES

Getting stuck behind a city street sweeper while it slowly perambulates down Broadway on a busy weekday morning can be annoying.

But while it may irk motorists trying to get downtown, city officials say they aren't sure there is a better time to put the sweepers on the street.

The city's two street sweepers cover more than 200 miles of streets, said Doug Leslie, director of the public works department.

In the downtown area, the street sweeper operators have to work around two factors: making sure they aren't out so early that the sweepers wake up residents and getting out early enough to beat the rush for parking spots.

"The sweeper runs through certain zones every day and it tries to cover areas like downtown before parking gets to be a situation to where it can't reach the curbsides," Leslie said. "Generally, the downtown is going to be the first area it gets to," then the streets leading out of the downtown area, such as Independence, he said.

"They can't effectively sweep those streets if they can't get to the curb line," he said.

The city is divided up into zones, and the main streets in those zones are cleaned first, said Tim Gramling, assistant director of public works.

But the operators aren't following a schedule that tells them to start down Broadway every morning at a particular time, Gramling said. "There's no particular time that we have set aside for any particular street," he said.

The goal is for each street to be swept once a week, he said.

That isn't always possible because streets with higher traffic or with construction traffic that carry mud or debris onto the street might need more attention, Gramling said.

"Usually we have to run up and down the streets twice, sometimes more than that," he said.

The fact that Broadway carries so much traffic makes it hard to find a time that is convenient for everyone, Leslie said.

"I don't see a time there when it's not busy," he said. "At 9 o'clock at night, it's like an interstate highway. I would be at a loss to try to find a time to do it."

With the citywide leaf pickup now under way, Gramling said, the city tries to schedule the sweepers to follow the vacuum trucks and pick up whatever debris is left.

And recent rains have washed leaves, branches and other debris into the streets, so the sweeper operators are trying to get that debris picked up before it clogs up the city's storm sewers, Leslie said.