Crews get late start on street cleaning after Calgary's long, snowy winter

The city is asking Calgarians to help this year's spring cleanup by ensuring their vehicles and waste bins are out of the way when the street sweepers come by.

The annual street sweeping program kicks off this week which is a relatively late start for the city crews, who normally start clearing away the winter gravel in early April.

• Find out when your street will be swept.
• See a map of the schedule here.

"We are a little bit late getting started this year because of the heavy winter we've had," said Bill Biensch, the maintenance manager at the city's roads department.

"And one of the issues or problems we've had is we've not been able to do a lot of winter sweeping, so we've got a lot of material out there to pick up this spring."

The operation will go on seven days a week, with 30 machines out on Calgary roads until mid to late June.

Calgary street sweeping begins

6 years ago

Duration 0:35

The city is asking Calgarians to help this year's spring cleanup by ensuring their vehicles and waste bins are out of the way when the street sweepers come by.

Calgarians need tokeep an eye out for the street sweeping signs, which will indicate when the crews are coming, and when cars must be moved off the roadway.

Vehicles that have not been moved from a road with a parking ban in place can be ticketed and towed to a nearby street if space is available, or to the city's impound lot.

The fine for not moving a vehicle can be $120. If paidwithin 10 days, it is reduced to $80, or $90 if paidwithin 30 days.

Residents whose street sweeping is set for garbage collection days are reminded to leave their bins on their property's adjacent boulevard or on the sidewalk to allow both the garbage to be picked up and the streets to be swept.

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