Dallas tries to improve trash collection, again

Dallas is gearing up to swap its trash collection route maps — now paper — with digital guidance. There’s no reason it can’t work. But route changes ended in disaster last year, and we hope this won’t be a repeat.

Trash collection is one of the most bread and butter tasks any city is responsible for. Residents care a great deal about it and notice immediately when there are issues.

As the city begins using this new service, it’s critical to keep that in mind.

On Wednesday, the Dallas City Council approved a roughly $840,000, three-year contract with Rubicon Global, a company that produces software-based waste, recycling and fleet operations products, its website says. Trash collectors will start using it as soon as March, city staff said.

Rolling out any new software generally comes with hiccups, but city staff said collection routes will probably be adjusted only minimally for efficiency, and residents’ collection days will go unaltered. Hopefully that mitigates the risks.

The idea is to provide real-time, turn-by-turn guidance and other features like route adjustment if stops are missed or a truck breaks down, as well as giving collectors the ability to record and photograph service exceptions for prohibited items or improper cart placement.

The latter of those features may help amp up Dallas’ “Take a Peek” program, which allows the city to remove recycling containers if residents continuously include prohibited items.

There is the possibility of expanding the software’s use in the future to cart delivery and repairs and for brush and bulky item collections, city staff said.

Trash collection shouldn’t be meddled with lightly, though. In 2022 and early 2023, the sanitation department redrew the city’s routes and changed from a four-day to a five-day collection schedule.

Chaos ensued.

At least 56% of customers had to put their trash out on new days. Drivers’ unfamiliarity with the new routes led to missed pickups, and 311 complaints about sanitation grew fourfold, our newsroom reported.

The incident was as bad for city sanitation workers as it was for residents. Some sanitation employees ended up working as many as 13 hours a day, and the new system was implemented without enough input from the workers who would be making it possible.

City staff said feedback on the new software from sanitation workers was positive. The city did a 90-day pilot program last year to test it. We asked city staff if any sanitation workers could comment about their experience with the new service, but our request was declined.

Trash collection is an often-thankless job, but it’s one that our sanitation workers carry out with admirable dedication. If this new software can help them do that without service delays for residents, we’re all for it.

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