That seems like a win for residents, even with the increased towing fine. IIRC, previously you had to pay more than $50 to the towing company to get your car back, and they charged more each day. This is just one $50 ticket.

Are they still going to have the trucks going around warning people that they'll get "tagged and towed"?

thats what I was wondering. If theyre not gonna warn anymore I worry about how much cleaning theyll be able to do!

So do they just sweep around the cars that weren't moved?

This seems like a good thing - especially since every time I walk my dogs on a street cleaning day, I would often see them towing AWD cars not on a flatbed, which can damage the transmission. The punishment of getting your car damaged and dealing with the logistics of getting it back doesn’t fit the crime.

I hope they keep sending Paul Revere to warn us that the street cleaners are coming, because people will want to help do the right thing, but sometimes need a reminder.

There are plenty of people in this town who won't get out of bed for $50.

How will I know it’s spring if I’m not woken up by a truck megaphone

Seems like it doesn’t accomplish the street cleaning goal. If we want clean streets we should enable the street sweepers, not weaken the program to make it cheaper

That'd be why it's a 1 year pilot, to see how well people can adjust to the new policy.

It's not just cheaper for residents, I assume that it's cheaper for the city, too...

Disaster for Phil's Towing

To say the least. $125 I believe for the tow? I’d rather pay all of that to Cambridge than to this parasitic towing practice. Let me be clear, that would be an absurd ticket, but at least it would add some value to society.

If those bizarre doomsday speakers stay silent, all the better.

Lots of dirty streets in the future.

Not sure how you figure. Towing is free to the city and they can then clean where the car had been. It’s cheaper because it collects revenue switching to ticketing, but cannot clean where cars are parked

Curious if there is a program that sends out texts the day before street cleaning if you input the street you parked on. Sometimes the day changes based on holidays (one random holiday got my roommate towed) or even a notification if there is going to be construction on the street (I got towed because they put fliers up only 24 hours prior to construction). As a coder, seems like a pretty non trivial thing to implement if the city can update it

I thought that they used to have police accompany the tow trucks. Now they won't need to do that. Even if they have meterm... um... people issue the tickets, that's got to be less expensive than having cops do it...

Haven’t seen that, good point. I thought they just tip off the tow company who charges the driver $100-200 for the pleasure.

Somerville has this and it's SUPER helpful.

There is indeed such a program. It's mentioned on the Street Cleaning website and is available here.

There is, it’s very clearly present on the city street cleaning page:

https://www.cambridgema.gov/services/streetcleaning

Wait they do?? Where? I'm signed up for all the other ones but not this!

So they're saying that a resident permit that doesn't have to worry about street cleaning is only $50/mo!

I think a huge number of people are just going to pay the ticket. There are certainly low-income people who live in Cambridge and people who live with a few roommates, but there's also a lot of people easily affording $3,000+ in rent. $50/mo to not have to deal with street cleaning will likely get a lot of people not moving their cars.

I think that's why the pilot will likely fail or at least need to be adjusted. If the ticket were $200, it would make a lot more people move their car. At $50, it's way cheaper than paying for off-street parking.

Maybe the alternative would be to do street cleaning twice a month like Somerville does. That way you'd get the places a car didn't move the first time on the second go-around. It would also mean $100/mo in fines instead of just $50.

At $50, it just seems like a lot of people would pay it and ignore it. I am glad that Cambridge is moving away from towing because that was always terrible. I just think that a $50 ticket is going to be meaningless to half of Cambridge. Median income in Cambridge is $113,000. Of the population that owns cars, the median income is going to be a lot higher. Towing was always way too harsh a solution to the problem, but $50 probably won't move the needle enough.

Thinking about it some more, maybe the solution is towing a car on the third ticket. We've ticketed your car twice for not moving for street cleaning and you don't care about the $50 so we're going to tow. I think that makes a lot of sense. Towing someone for a mistake is way too harsh. However, letting some rich person pay way less than off-street parking costs to ignore street cleaning seems too lenient and problematic for street cleaning. This way, the city just tickets for infractions that might be honest mistakes, but also deals with habitual violators to make sure that people understand this isn't a $50/mo way to buy yourself out of street cleaning.

I believe the DPW said it would cost $100k more for the program. They’re going to have a guy with a leaf blower walk the street and get trash and leaves out from parked cars.

Oh, snap. Looks like they removed the text reminders. But, you can receive an email still or download a calendar. Too bad, the texts were super convenient.

ETA: It's weird, Cambridge and Somerville clearly use the same system and Cambridge has text reminders available. Maybe Somerville will turn text reminders back on when street sweeping starts up again?

Correct

I see the stupid street cleaning go by and the street looks the same before and after. A small streak is damp, and that's it.

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I'm curious who will be writing the tickets. The lazy guys are supposedly already understaffed and have no additional capacity for writing tickets. The parking department has the staff, but this will pull them away from the squares where they currently operate.

I would assume the concern is that the garbage attracts rats and the leaves block storm drains and cause flooding. A few cars may be fine but if too many people leave their cars out, then it could cause larger issues.

Somerville manages just fine

This is the dumbest idea I’ve heard in a while. “This program will only work of residents (do their part without any meaningful penalty for not doing it). Yeah that’s not how humans operate.

And pay for guys to come around and clean those spots by hand, if necessary, or if you live in the right place

It’s going to be a mess. Students and anyone who leaves for extended periods of time have zero incentive to move their cars. This is another policy made under the guise of helping low income people but really just benefits more wealthy people who just don’t care about the $50.

Not in Central! The streets really need it monthly.

Thoughtful, and researched. Got my vote pizzaman

street sweeping odd number side you will be tagged but not towed.

it ain't Paul it's Lenny Silva retired DPW worker:

https://www.wbur.org/morningedition/2016/07/01/cambridge-street-cleaning-voice

I think this is the good idea. Cambridge will save money and make money.

It will also destroy Phil’s and B&B.

That shit is ridiculous. More crap non drivers have to deal with because of lazy, selfish drivers

Meh, I don't see it doing much. In Montreal I saw these cool street vacuum things with a portable hose that can snake around cars. Something like this:

https://www.auto-innov.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/montreal-sweepers.png

Towing someone for breaking the law isn’t harsh. Don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time

So the streets will be filthy because spoiled, lazy drivers can’t be inconvenienced. What a dumb idea.

That shit is obnoxious. Stop bothering non drivers.

More welfare for drivers. Just what we need!

American drivers are famously lazy and shitty at following laws. Only a complete moron thinks this will work.

Get bent you live in a city. Do you complain about police sirens disturbing law abiding citizens too?

Anything is better than dealing with that scumbag tow company

So less clean Streets

You are 100% right. they won’t be able to street clean very effectively if it’s just going to be $50.

Agreed. Personally I don’t understand not towing these cars. City streets are fucking filthy and it’s annoying when people just leave their cars there.

WTF are you talking about? Most cities do not do this.

We love to see it!

I lived in Somerville for 2 years, and they already had this program. It worked fine and most people move their cars to avoid the ticket