The City and County of San Francisco has added three new mechanical sweepers designated to remove debris from protected bike lanes, its Public Works Department announced.
“As we build more of these separated bike lanes to better protect cyclists from cars and trucks, we needed to make sure that we have an efficient and effective way to keep them clean and safe,” said Public Works Director Mohammed Nuru. “These new trucks will get the job done.”
San Francisco now has more than 15 miles of protected bike lanes. Previously, Public Works crews had to manually sweep the separated bike lanes because the regular mechanical sweeper trucks were too wide to access them. The work was time-consuming, and the bike lanes were not cleaned as frequently as was needed. Now, the narrower compact trucks can cover a lot more ground during their seven-day-a-week operation.
The sweepers spray water on the street, with no detergents, and suck it back up into a tank. They get clean water from fire hdyrants, and dirty water is offloaded into a support truck for disposal, Streetsblog SF reported. Officials said they will buy more of these trucks as the protected bike lane network grows.
