Salem Annual Street Sweeping To Begin Tuesday

SALEM, MA — The start of spring this week brings with it the beginning of the annual street sweeping schedule in Salem with sweeping on the city's entrance corridors set to start on Tuesday and sweeping in residential neighborhoods set to begin on April 3.

This year's schedule includes the entrance corridors being swept six times from March through September, with residential sweeping occurring from April 3 to May 5, and then again from Nov. 6 through Dec. 6.

Each entrance corridor will be swept over a period of two consecutive days, which will alternate between the odd and even side of the streets, with no parking and towing on those streets from 5 a.m. to 7 a.m. The full entrance corridor sweeping schedule can be found here.

Entrance corridor streets are Boston Street, Bridge Street, Essex Street (from Boston Street to North/Summer Street), Lafayette Street (from Derby Street to Marblehead line), Loring Avenue, and North Street.

Sweeping in The Point neighborhood is set to begin on March 27 and continue on every second and fourth Monday of the month through September. Cars must be removed from these streets from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. on these days with residents of the affected streets able to park in the South Harbor Garage for free from 8 p.m. on Sunday through 8 p.m. on Monday.

Downtown street sweeping will begin on March 29 and continue every third Wednesday through September. Blowing will begin at 9 p.m. with street sweeping between 11 p.m. and 3 a.m.

There will be no parking downtown during those times with residents able to park for free at the Museum Place Garage from Wednesday at 8 p.m. through Thursday at 8 a.m.

"Last year we scheduled fall sweeping to begin in November to try to capture some of the falls leaves on the streets," Salem Public Services Director David Knowlton said. "This plan was very successful in removing street leaves, and we will continue this initiative this November."

Neighborhood sweeping will continue to take place on both sides of the street from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. on the same day. Neighborhood streets are broken down into four zones. Sweep days are the next day after the regularly scheduled trash day.

Monday sweep schedules are for the preceding Friday's trash day and are subject to change during holiday weeks. Those schedules can be found here with paper copies available at the Department of Public Services office at 5 Jefferson Avenue.

Once a neighborhood street is swept, residents will be able to move their vehicles back onto their street.

"The fewer cars on the street, the better we can clean," Knowlton said. "Our goal is to clean the streets, not to tow cars, so please park accordingly during scheduled street sweeping days."

Street sweeping schedules are subject to change because of heavy rainfall or extremely cold locations.

(Scott Souza is a Patch field editor covering Beverly, Danvers, Marblehead, Peabody, Salem and Swampscott. He can be reached at Scott.Souza@Patch.com. Twitter: @Scott_Souza.)