No Access
The street sweeping program in its former condition was ineffective in some areas. Because of the high density of parked cars in the neighborhoods adjacent to the Downtown/University Avenue area, street sweepers were often unable to reach the curb - sometimes driving an entire block without reaching any areas of the curb. This resulted not only in dirty streets, where noticeable piles of leaves accumulated for weeks at a time, but money and time was wasted on streets where sweepers could not access the curb. To partially remedy the situation, Palo Alto's Public Works Department, which runs the sweeping program, sets up "temporary no-parking" signs approximately every five weeks. The City expended more than $30,000 per year in the installation of these signs alone.  Because of the infrequent sweeps, large amounts of debris accumulated primarily because of the large time gap between sweepings.

The Next Step
To solve the problem, the City had been considering the establishment of permanent "No Parking on Sweep Days" signs. Other Bay Area cities, large and small, have set up similar programs, such as San Francisco, Daly City and Berkeley. The absence of cars in a larger area than currently exists, would allow street sweepers to quickly and efficiently clean neighborhood streets, and residents would know ahead of time when they would be unable to park their cars on the street. The money saved by not setting up temporary no-parking signs every 3-5 weeks could also offset the cost of installing the signs.

Trial Run
With the help of an intern, the City conducted a survey of the initially identified areas residents and established a trial zone using the new system.

Sweeping Survey
To best gauge resident's feelings toward a more efficient street sweeping system in the downtown area, a survey of impacted residents was conducted in late July through early August 2004.

Sixty-eight percent of residents who responded in support of a No Parking on Sweep Day program demonstrates the strong desire for the implementation of such a program. In fact, less than a quarter of downtown residents who responded were not in support of the proposed program.

Since Downtown North residents would be impacted first by the program, the survey was broken down to show just the responses of those residents. Surprisingly enough, even those residents of the Downtown North neighborhood, whose streets are the most crowded, support a No Parking on Sweep Day program in higher numbers than downtown residents as a whole. This may be due to the fact that many of the cars parked in the Downtown North neighborhood belong not to residents, but to people who work downtown and park on the residential streets during the day.

To discover if there was a correlation between the number of cars a resident owned and their opposition to the program, we analyzed results only from residents who placed in the 95th percentile in terms of the number of cars - those who had four or more cars - in their household. The results showed that residents who have the highest number of cars actually support a No Parking on Sweep Day program to a siginificantly higher degree than downtown residents as a whole - only 13 percent of residents with the highest number of cars had any opposition to the program.

With the results from this survey showing significant support for the program, the Public Works department went ahead with a trial No Parking on Sweep Day program, which is explained in detail on the following page.

No Parking Trial
With the results from the resident survey showing support for a No Parking on Sweep Day program, the Public Works Department went ahead with a trial zone to test the effectiveness of the new No Parking zones. The test zone was set up in Downtown North and is bordered by San Francisquito Creek to the north, Alma St. to the west, Lytton Ave. to the south and Bryant St. to the east.

This initial trial ended in a permanent program established effective September 2004 wherein permanent signs were placed at each corner to identify the NO PARKING time and day.

This program ran for another eighteen months at which time Council adopted another resolution to expand the program to identified locations throughout the City.

These locations are listed in a Planned No Parking for Sweeping schedule.

•  9/1/05:  The first test zone was set up in Downtown North on the streets bordered by San Francisquito Creek to the north, Alma St. to the west, Lytton Ave. to the south and Bryant St. to the east.
• 3/7/05 :  The City Council approved a resolution making the above trial zone a permanent installation. 
•  3/6/2006: The Public Works Department reported to Council the accomplishments and success of the previously approved zone.  The department advised Council that they would return with a plan to expand the program to additional areas of the City.
•  5/15/2006:  Council unanimously adopted a resolution to expand the plan for No Parking on Sweep Day over a three year period.  This will allow the department to add an additional seventeen zones to the sweeping program.