On a bright and sunny morning a few days after the close of The Ohio State University’s spring semester earlier this month, chains rattle on 12th Avenue as a young woman runs from one of the houses a block north of the campus. She’s wearing a robe, her hair is wrapped in a towel and she's wearing shower shoes on her feet.
She looks both ways and runs across the street, swings the door to her car open and jumps in. She starts it just in time, and peels away to find a new parking spot before her vehicle becomes one of several that are towed away.
Plenty of other people weren’t as lucky. It’s street sweeping season in Columbus. About 350 vehicles were towed during the first round this year.
Vehicles caught parked on the wrong side of the street during the second week of the month in the University District are likely to become one of the thousands towed away and cited each year for obstructing the street during the deep clean, meant to keep litter and other pollution out of waterways and treatment plants.
Nursing student Alana May was one of the unlucky ones.
"This is the second time my car’s been towed," she said while waiting for her vehicle later that day at the Columbus Police Impound Lot.
May and her boyfriend were about to go out Friday morning when she walked outside and realized every car parked on the street was gone.
She came to pick up the vehicle right away. The last time this happened, she was without a car all weekend.
"I'm not trying to wait until tomorrow, (because) one, they're closed. And two, they have day charges, (because) the longer and longer you have it in there, the more they'll charge you for it," May said.
Located in an industrial area on Impound Lot Road, it’s only open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on weekdays. Sometimes the lines to retrieve an impounded vehicle move quickly, while other times, people wait for an hour or two, especially after street sweeping.
Columbus police spokesperson Melanie Amato said the line wait times ebb and flow, and officials are looking into solutions following complaints about accessing the tow yard. No buses come that way, and sidewalks, while available around the immediate vicinity, are nowhere to be found in the mostly industrial area surrounding the facility.
Scott Tourville with the city’s Department of Public Service said street sweeping is an important way to collect trash thrown into the streets.
“We practice street sweeping as a preventative measure to try to help eliminate those types of pollutants that can contaminate our natural water resources," he said.
The practice is encouraged by the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency, Tourville said.
To retrieve a vehicle, people have to pay $125 for the tow, and $70 of that fee goes to the contracted tow company. Owners have to pay a $55 ticket and $18 a day for storage in the lot. If owners don’t pick up their vehicles within two or three days, unclaimed vehicles are evaluated for auction after a notification process that takes several months.
The city’s 3,500-spot police impound lot is near capacity, with some spots specifically reserved for vehicles towed during monthly street sweeping.
During street sweeping in 2022, the city was towing between 200 to 300 vehicles a month in the University District. That led to about 2,000 street sweeping tows in 2022, about half as many as there were in 2018 when towing was done in six districts.
Tourville said street sweeping is still done in those other districts, two to five times a year, but vehicles aren’t towed to make way for sweeping vehicles. He said parking challenges in the other neighborhoods were a part of the decision to reduce where they tow to sweep.
He said many students are out of the area during the street sweeping season, and it is logistically easier to plan and warn drivers about tows in a more condensed area. Tourville also says there is a lot of trash in the streets in the University District, more so than in other districts.
“We're doing what we can to make sure that this kind of trash and debris, whether it's leaves, whether it's grass clippings or other types of natural organic debris, whether it's truly trash and plastic bags and pop bottles and things like that, we're doing everything we can to try to keep as much of that stuff out of the storm sewer, because one thing it can and does or will do is clog the storm sewer and cause drainage problems or flooding, until it ultimately does make its way into rivers and creeks and streams," Tourville said.
Since tows along streets in other districts have been eliminated, the number of tows happening in the University District are increasing.
In April of this year, about 350 vehicles were towed and about 675 vehicles were ticketed, resulting in about $125,000 of revenue for the city. That could lead to more than $800,000 in revenue during this street sweeping season, if all drivers pays the fees and tickets, and before the cost owed to the tow truck companies is subtracted.
Drivers can sign up for alerts to warn them of street sweeping where they park on the city's website. Warnings are also posted on fixed signs, mobile signs and fliers in the area.
