The Streets Department's mission is to provide clean and safe streets in a cost-effective and efficient manner. The department delivers a number of City services that are critical to maintaining the public health and safety in our communities. These essential services include but are not limited to, curbside trash and recycling collection to over 500,000 households, maintaining all traffic control devices and street lighting, the construction and maintenance of 350 bridges and 2,575 miles of streets and highways and snow and ice removal.
The department is organized into three divisions: Sanitation, Transportation, which includes the Highways, Survey and Design, Street Lighting, Traffic, Planning and Analysis Units; and Administration.
The Sanitation Division is responsible for conducting an integrated solid waste management system that includes refuse collection, recycling, and disposal of the City's waste materials. The Division also manages community outreach and educational initiatives that encourage recycling and litter reduction.
Within the Transportation Engineering Division, the Highway Unit constructs, repairs, and maintains City streets by determining the location, time, method, and manner for openings or excavations of underground street reconstruction. This Unit is also the primary response unit for the City in weather events such as snow and ice.
The Survey and Design Unit plans and constructs city bridges and designs city streets, highways, drives in Fairmount Park, and roads. It performs all surveying functions for the City, furnishing lines and grades of all kinds, preparing street maps, plans, and other land records of real property, and maintaining all road records and street opening data. The unit performs all highway planning functions and coordinates the City/State Highway Program.
The Street Lighting Unit is responsible for the design, installation, operation and maintenance of the City's street lighting system including 100,000 street lights and 18,000 alley lights. The Traffic Engineering Unit determines the type and location of all signs, signals, markings and devices for regulating and controlling vehicular and pedestrian traffic. Its employees install, maintain, and operate traffic control devices, compile traffic data, prepare engineering studies, and analyze the causes of accidents to provide for the safe flow of traffic in the city. The Traffic Engineering Unit has 2,800 signalized intersections, 15,000 conventional stop intersections, and 3,000 all-way stop intersections under its jurisdiction. The Planning and Analysis Unit assist the Transportation Units with strategic planning and analysis. The Administrative Division provides support services for the department to assist the operating units in functioning efficiently and effectively. Services are provided in the areas of management information systems, budget and accounting, human resources, training and development and public affairs.
The Streets Department manages over 1200 vehicles across 5 separate divisions. The management of these vehicles includes multiple components that requires tracking and regular status updates. At this time all of these actions are performed separately and by multiple staff members. A few of the tracking topics include vehicle acquisition, relinquishments, accidents, location status, driver scheduling, vehicle reservations, vehicle assignments, violations payments, repair and maintenance scheduling, etc. Our vehicles also require emergency mobilization organization for events like strikes, snow storms, and citywide and centralized special events.
Ultimately we would like to have a database stored in a centralized location within the department where all divisions can access their respective vehicle inventory on a day-to-day basis. We would also like a dashboard showing key details about certain vehicles, for example, multiple violations, accidents, and out-of-service.
