Sherman Torres
Division Manager
The Street Maintenance Division of the Bureau of Street Services (StreetsLA) provides daily maintenance for one of the largest and most congested municipal street networks in the nation. Responsible for cleaning and maintenance services to dedicated public thoroughfares within the city of Los Angeles, the division also maintains bike lanes and special mayoral directives such as the "Great Streets Initiative". Additionally, the division is one of the first responders called upon to provide essential services in the event of an emergency.
Managing 6,500 centerline miles of roadway effectively and efficiently requires creating smaller service areas to handle the specific needs of the vast city of Los Angeles. The Street Maintenance Division is divided into two main regions, metro and valley. Those regions are each divided into two maintenance areas, creating four main geographical maintenance and cleaning areas within the city. The metro region houses the bay harbor and north central maintenance areas while the valley region includes the east and west valley maintenance areas. Those service areas are each further divided into 6 maintenance districts, with each district maintaining over 300 centerline miles of city streets.
The two main functions of the division, cleaning and maintenance have distinctly different and specialized all together under one umbrella.
The cleaning function operates daily and citywide using clean and green energy efficient sweeping equipment via three types of cleaning routes.
- Over 800 weekly restricted parking routes (meaning streets are posted with “No Parking” signs that state the day and time the street will be swept, and parking citations will be given)
- Over 300 non-restricted routes (meaning there are no parking restrictions for street cleaning on these routes)
- Over 100 Early A.M. routes (which are typically located in business districts to limit the disruption of business and traffic flow)
Approximately 40% of the streets in the city have restricted parking and the remaining streets are non-restricted. Street cleaning is also involved with pre and post cleaning of special events such as the LA Marathon and the Hollywood Christmas Parade.
Unlike the routine cleaning functions of the division, the maintenance operations occur on an as-needed basis. Maintaining the roadways consists of making small asphalt repairs to the city streets whenever repairs are needed that don’t require resurfacing or reconstruction. These repairs would include but are not limited to potholes, pop outs and eroded areas. The daily workload for this division function comes from constituents’ requests via the city of Los Angeles’ Customer Relations Management System (MyLA311). Whether the requests are made online, by mobile app, or through calling our help desk, the function of the division is to respond directly to the requests of the residents. The MyLA311 system has been an invaluable tool in not only managing service requests from constituents, but it also aids management in planning daily workloads and duties while monitoring productivity and efficiency. Having data in a centralized location helps the Bureau to better serve the constituents.
Along with the daily core duties of cleaning and maintaining the streets of Los Angeles, our division has taken on the task of maintaining and cleaning over 600 miles of bike lane's citywide. We have proudly continued to support the Mayor’s "Great Streets Initiative", by maintaining and enhancing the great streets in all 15 council districts to improve access and mobility for the citizens of Los Angeles.
The bureau’s mission is to properly maintain all of the streets within the City of Los Angeles in a state of good repair and the division plays a significant role in bureau’s mission through its daily functions.