Road-sweeping vehicles to replace manual cleaning in more private landed estates

UPDATED Jan 05, 2025, 05:00 AMSINGAPORE - Roads in a dozen more private landed estates will be cleaned by road-sweeping vehicles in 2025 to cut cleaning times and manpower needs.

They will join 33 other private estates where road-sweeping vehicles have been deployed as part of a programme launched by the National Environment Agency (NEA) in 2019.

It is part of the Alternate Roadside Parking programme, where NEA works with neighbourhood committees (NCs) in private estates to encourage residents to park their vehicles on one side of the road on certain days, so mechanised road sweepers can clean the other side unimpeded.

Then, on the next scheduled cleaning day, residents are supposed to park on the alternate side, so the rest of the road can be cleaned.

A news report said in 2019 that there were some 200 NCs islandwide. NCs are grassroots organisations that serve private estates.

Before 2019, all roads in private landed estates were swept manually by cleaners.

NEA said the new method of cleaning has cut cleaning times by 50 to 80 per cent. It also added that residents report that their estates are now cleaner.

In the Mayfair Park estate in Bukit Timah, a road-sweeping vehicle takes about 20 minutes to clean Jalan Wajek, which is roughly 300m-long.

Mr Alex Lee, a manager at NEA’s division of public cleanliness, said three workers – one to drive the vehicle, and two to blow and sweep leaves and litter into its path – are usually needed for the cleaning.

Before the Mayfair Park estate joined the NEA’s programme in December 2021, it took about an hour for four to six workers to manually sweep Jalan Wajek, he added.

Retired university administrator Ng Suan Eng, who has lived in Mayfair Park for over two decades, said her estate has become cleaner since road-sweeping vehicles – which have a vacuum and rotating brooms – were deployed.

That said, when ST visited Mayfair Park on Jan 2, it observed that the roll-out of the programme has not been without hiccups.

Madam Ng, 78, who parks her car in her driveway, said residents living along Jalan Wajek have always parked their vehicles on the left side of the road – even before the Alternate Roadside Parking programme – and most of them do not move their vehicles to the right side of the road as advised on alternate cleaning days.

This happens despite reminders to residents about the parking arrangements in the form of signs attached to lamp posts and pamphlets distributed to residents by NEA and neighbourhood committees.

At Mayfair Park on Jan 2, a scheduled cleaning day, all the vehicles parked along Jalan Wajek were on the left side of the road, even though residents were meant to park on the right side.

Under the Alternate Roadside Parking initiative, residents are encouraged to park on one side of the road on certain days, and on the alternate side on the next scheduled cleaning day, so that road sweeping vehicles can clean both sides of the road.ST PHOTO: NG SOR LUAN

Another resident, Mr Arun Iyer, who usually parks his car in his family’s driveway, said there is a common understanding among the estate’s residents to park on the left side.

“It’s a hassle for residents to remember to park on the other side only on certain days, when they are all already used to parking on the left,” said the 52-year-old, who works in the healthcare industry.

“But as long as we are all parking on the same side, the road-sweeping truck can do its job.”

When asked about this, Mr Lee said cleaners have had to use leaf blowers to blow leaves and litter from the undercarriage of vehicles so that the left side of the road is still cleaned.

He added that occasionally, there are a few residents or visitors who do not park on the same side of the road as everyone else, and the road-sweeping vehicle would have to clean the road in a zig-zag fashion as a result.

Mr Lee said NEA and NCs will continue to conduct door-to-door visits to encourage residents to support the programme.

It also leaves pamphlets on the windscreens of residents’ vehicles to remind them about the initiative.

NEA said the new method of cleaning has cut cleaning times by 50 to 80 per cent.ST PHOTO: NG SOR LUAN

The situation is similar in other estates, where most residents park their vehicles on the same side of the road, making it possible for road-sweeping vehicles to clean the other side easily, said Mr Lee.

He estimated that about 60 to 70 per cent of residents in some of these estates follow the advisory’s directions on the correct side of the road to park on.

NEA has not introduced enforcement actions to penalise residents who do not adhere to the alternate parking arrangements because it hopes to engage them through a more collaborative approach, he said.

Wong Yang is a journalist at The Straits Times, covering housing, property, land use and community stories.