The elusive Austin street sweeper, captured in the urban wild. Photo: Nicole Cobler/Axios
👋 Asher here.
Having grown up in New York City, street sweepers — those rumbling machines perpetually battling urban decay — were as familiar to my ears as horn honking, jackhammers and sirens. (It's a loud city.)
They passed through my neighborhood at least twice a week to rake up the refuse that loitered curbside.
Zoom in: If you're lucky, you can catch glimpses of street sweepers in the Austin wild.
By the numbers: With a $3.5 million budget, Austin Resource Recovery (ARR) operates 26 standard sweepers and two bike lane sweepers.
ARR sweeps residential streets up to six times a year and major streets and protected bike lanes twice a month.
Overall, ARR crews remove nearly 6,200 tons of trash and debris from Austin roadways each year, Allison Strupeck, a spokesperson for the department, tells Axios.
What they're saying: "Clean streets provide a healthy, safe and attractive environment for all users of the roadway," Strupeck says.
What's next: If you're a street-sweeping nerd like us, you can check out this city map to which parts of town are next.
