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Get out of the way, the street sweepers must feed.

As fall foliage blankets roads across the five boroughs, the sanitation department’s trusty brooms on four wheels are sucking up more debris than any other time of the year. City officials report the big bruisers have an insatiable appetite for leaves.

During a typical autumn week when the city’s oaks, maples and London plane trees shed amber and yellow leaves, DSNY deploys an additional 364 street sweepers along new routes — or about a 31% increase from the usual 1,162 weekly routes for the fleet of giant vacuums.

A sanitation department spokesperson said crews have to make hundreds of “short dumps” every week this time of year, where the mechanical brooms become bloated and must purge in the middle of a route so they can get back to devouring leafy goodness.

Each street sweeper can hold up to 1,500 pounds of debris. For most of the year, that’s made up of regular old New York City street trash, like bodega bags, rat carcasses and Coney Island whitefish. But during the fall, leaves occupy much of the street sweepers’ diet.

This work isn’t just about an annual harvest sacrifice to the city’s mechanized munchers — clearing the leaves off the street prevents storm drains form clogging which can lead to serious flooding.

New Yorkers who don’t move their cars for alternate side parking to make way for the street sweeper hinder the process, sometimes with dire consequences. When Hurricane Ida struck in 2021, there was increased flooding in some areas of the city where storm drains were jammed with trash. At the time, then-Mayor Bill de Blasio had reduced alternate side parking across the city, leading to more trash on the roads.

“Richard Wright wrote that the gale of autumn swept the trees clean of leaves and drew the hills near, but on New York City streets, the only thing drawn near by a leafless tree is a clogged storm drain,” said DSNY spokesperson Joshua Goodman. “Move your car during alternate side parking and avoid the autumn gale of a $65 fine.”

NYC transportation news this week

Zohran Mamdani’s free bus plan. MTA Chair Janno Lieber isn’t a huge fan. Mamdani has estimated it would cost the city upwards of $630 million a year — but Lieber said the actual price would be close to $1 billion in the coming years if the MTA cracks down on fare evasion.

Subway homelessness. Mamdani wants to tweak the city’s current homeless outreach approach in the transit system to exclude the use of police officers. But workers in a specialized program said their job wouldn’t be safe without cops.

Grand Central subway station upgrades. After five years, the MTA has finished a $700 million project to rehabilitate three subway stations below 42nd Street with new staircases, escalators and elevators.

Kids need to get to school somehow. The city’s education department is laying out plans to give free OMNY cards to all students if a contract can’t be reached with school bus operators.

Metro-North in the Bronx, someday. A major project to bring Metro-North trains to Penn Station and open four new stations for the commuter line in the Bronx is at least three years behind schedule — and the MTA is blaming federally run Amtrak for the delays.

Daylight Saving Time ending. City officials are reminding drivers, pedestrians and cyclists to be on high alert navigating streets as clocks fall back this weekend and daylight fades earlier.

Curious Commuter

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Question from Ada in Brooklyn

Where will the IBX route run in Brooklyn?

Answer

The MTA and Gov. Kathy Hochul have promised the IBX, or Interborough Express, light rail route for so long that it’s understandable readers like Ada have forgotten where it will run. The MTA plans for the train line to run between Jackson Heights, Queens and the Brooklyn Army Terminal in Sunset Park, primarily along an existing set of freight tracks. After nearly four years, the agency is still designing the route. Here’s hoping the actual train moves faster than the planning process. Stay tuned to this newsletter for future updates on the project.