Ever since I moved into my home 9 years ago we have had a type of free market trash collection system. Four to five various trash companies you can pick from and they all compete with eachother to give you the best “deal” but they all end up costing about the same. I always thought the system was lame but never thought much about it.
Well, the city has started to push the issue again and has a nice list of reasons why a single provider would be best:
-The various companies would bid for the contract with the city and we’d probably get rates about 1/2 of what we’re now paying.
-Less traffic on trash days with only one companies trucks on the streets= safer residential streets, less wear/tear on roads, less noise/exhaust.
Seems like a slam dunk to me. But the city says they’re getting a lot of resistance on the issue from residents who the city telling them who they have to use and claiming being locked into one provider means they can become lax on service.
They’re going to have a couple of open public forums to discuss this and I’d like to push for the one provider route.
Anyone see any horrible reason to go to the city mandated direction or have horror stories about it?
I’d cut the city into several sanitation districts (based on topography and road geometry) and award a single, time-limited contract for each of those. That way you can still have multiple providers and competition on both service and pricing, but only one company working any given block in any given week.
We used to have great service from a single provider. We switched providers a few years ago, and now it sucks. They make us put the containers in the street, then they come by and plop them back in the street, except not near the curb. On trash day, you have to drive an obstacle course through the residential areas, avoiding trash containers out in the middle of the road (or near the middle). And they often leave the lids open, so when it’s raining, you come home to a garbage container with a bunch of water in it. Empty it out, and there’s always some residual nastiness that comes out with the water.
So I guess it can be good or bad, depending on the provider.
There’s no way around the conclusion that a single trash collector is going to be more efficient than what you have now. You can have 4-5 trucks going down your block to pick up all the trash, instead of 1 truck.
Frankly, either the city gets a deal that is a lower price than your current payment, or they don’t, it’ll be pretty obvious if trash service winds up costing more. In terms of being lax on service, the provider has an incentive to maintain a decent level of service, because they don’t want to lose the city contract. That can be more incentive than the threat of losing an individual customer.
Downside is that if there are differences between the different providers, you can’t choose the one that best fits your personal needs.
This. Nothing wrong with an enforced monopoly when the benefits are obvious (ie., not having three different trucks collecting from three neigboring houses).
I wish it were 4-5 trucks a week. We have 6 companies that service our area. All pickups are on Tuesdays. All of them provide weekly garbage pickup. All of them provide every other week recycling pickup. 4 of them provide weekly yardwaste pickup, in the summer.
So on the recycling weeks in the summer, we have 14 garbage trucks going first one way up the street and then 14 going down it, to get the other side.
I’m in one of the Houston suburbs, and our city contracted trash service works fine. And this is in one of the most conservative, free-market districts you’ll find.
On the other hand, in the next town over, the city contracted service is not so good in many places. Their mayor and council are known to be tools that favor certain neighborhoods over others.
It depends on how much you trust your city council/mayor/whatever to get you a good deal and enforce good service.
I think so. We don’t have a lot of heavy vehicles running up and down our streets every day except trash day, and those garbage trucks do look damn heavy. I’d like to think decreasing the amount by 5x would help.
Noise and safety was also a biggie. 5 companies diesel trucks zipping around the neighborhood all morning and afternoon is a minor annoyance. Doesn’t make it very safe for the kids to bike around the neighborhood.
And apparently price is a biggie. I’ve heard from other cities around us that have the mandated provider and they pay a fraction of what we do.
It’s be nice if the city played a limited role in it as in all they’d do is take and award bids on an annual basis. Billing and complaints I’d think should still go through the provider.
I live in a city where the trash hauling is on a free market basis. During the past year, our city council thought it might be wise to consider going to a city wide contractor. The local paper got involved and polled various people around the city in various neighborhoods on their current cost for trash pick-up. It turned out that approximately a third of the city’s residents (including myself) were already paying less than the amounts that the city council were in discussions with various contractors. Fortunately there was so much dissension among voters, that the council quashed the issue, much to the chagrin of several contractors.
Here are several reasons why it’s a bad idea
Lack of competition
Lack of incentive to serve the individual customers
Cost of oversight administration within the city government (one less thing the government needs to be involved in)
Long term contracts, that the indiviual citizens have no say so in.
No variable of service for individual customers needs, one size fits all
They should go and negotiate with their current provider on their own. Clearly there’s a market for lower costs trash providers in the city. If I can find milk cheaper than you can, do you need your local government to do your negotiating or shopping for you?
I’ve only lived in one place my entire life where the city wasn’t involved in trash pickup and that’s because I lived in a rural area. How large are these cities with 3 or more companies doing trash pickup?
If every single resident of the town was legally required to buy a gallon of milk a week, in order to ensure the health and sanitation of the town, I would not consider it odd for the government to play a role in milk pricing & delivery.
I guess that’s the difference between you and me. I don’t feel that we need to pay the government to get involved in commercial negotiations.
Besides, not every resident is required to go out and obtain trash service. Only those that live in single family homes. Living in a single family home is not a requirement.
