Photo by Carol Toler
Dallas Sanitation Director Clifton Gillespie spoke with Dallas City Council members Wednesday to answer questions about his plans to eliminate alley trash pickup for some households. The action is necessary, he said, to improve efficiency and safety.
In early 2024, Gillespie proposed switching all alley service to curbside, but he began considering other options after council members were inundated with phone calls and emails from angry constituents. His “hybrid approach,” unveiled last June, didn’t fare much better. A November survey, sent by city officials to measure the opinions of affected customers, had a record-high 25% response rate, with 93% requesting to keep their alley service and 60% agreeing to pay more for that option.
In Wednesday’s presentation to the council, Gillespie made it clear he still believes curbside collection is the “best practice” citywide, but he shared additional possible alternatives and invited council members to weigh in before he makes the final decision.
He said the “hybrid” approach (option one) would transition homes to curbside where alleys are nine feet wide or narrower and 60% or more of homes have front driveways. This would affect 26,000 customers. The “tighter feasibility” approach (option two) involves transitioning only alleys with 100% front driveways, short driveway length and no circular drives. This would affect fewer than 10,000 customers. The “route-by-route” plan (option three) would eliminate alley service where alley conditions are critical (rutted and unsafe for trucks and their drivers to navigate) and survey response rates were low. This would affect fewer than 5,000 customers. The “no transition” plan (option four) would retain alley service for customers who currently have it, except where conditions are too dangerous to continue.
“The purpose of this comparison is not to identify a right or wrong choice, but to clearly lay out the tradeoffs involved,” Gillespie explained. “From a safety and operational standpoint, staff supports approaches that include some degree of transition out of constrained alley environments. That’s options one, two and three.”
Some council members asked for detailed cost savings figures, comparisons with large metropolitan cities across the country, safety incident comparisons between alley and curbside, and dollars spent repairing damage by sanitation trucks in the front of homes versus the alleys. Gillespie and his staff did not have those figures to share but said research and development work would be completed by his department based on feedback from the council.
Standard, modern sanitation trucks are wider and hold more capacity, making them more efficient, Gillespie said. Several council members acknowledged the possibility of increasing fees for alley users. Some, though, particularly those with mostly curbside customers, pressed for assurances that households in their districts would not see fee increases to pay for retention of alley service in other parts of the city.
“The majority of my homes are up in Midway Hollow, Elm Thicket, North Park and West Dallas,” said District 6 Council member Laura Cadena. “They have never had alley service or pickup, so that is a concern of mine — making sure that we keep their rates low, especially because there are some economic challenges in that community.”
District 14 Council member Cara Mendelsohn noted the poor condition of alleyways throughout the city and offered a mea culpa on behalf of Dallas leaders.
“That’s on us,” she said. “That’s a systematic lack of investment.”
She pressed a question she’d asked before: Could the city outsource sanitation services the way Fort Worth and several other cities do? She also wanted to know why the City Plan Commission continues approving housing developments with alleys and rear entry if alley maintenance and alley sanitation services are unlikely to continue.
District 3 Council member Zarin Gracey asked about damage incidents in the alley versus curbside.
“Alley collection represents 37% of our collection points,” said Gillespie, “but it makes up 58% of our damage.” In narrow alleyways, trucks sometimes hit gas meters, fences, utility poles and trees. Presumably, the remaining damage occurs during curbside collection, and Gillespie referred to sanitation trucks striking cars and other impediments along the street.
District 10 Council member Kathy Stewart noted that she had walked alleys in Lake Highlands with Gillespie.
“What we are usually and very often doing around this horseshoe is balancing different interests,” she said. “So, we are balancing the risk of injury to workers and property damage and operational concerns with what is workable, right? Workable for our residents.”
Stewart said she and her husband, Robb, have owned five houses in D10 over 40 years, including two with curbside pickup, and “it’s not a bad option.”
“When you have a front driveway where the elevation is fairly flat, it is not terribly different,” she said, explaining that using the alley is more difficult at her current home, where there’s an incline in the back.
“I think you have to get into the nuts and bolts of this,” she added, “and you do have to find what’s workable.”
One issue not addressed was the inefficiency of potentially having different styles of sanitation trucks crisscross each other in neighborhoods as they service some streets which no longer qualify for alley pickup and others which do. Will trucks meet themselves coming and going as one block’s driveways are deemed too steep or too long or too curved or otherwise ineligible for the switchover, while the adjoining block’s are not?
After considering feedback from the council, Gillespie will do additional research, communicate with customers and work with sanitation officials to begin implementing the new plan in February of 2027.
You’ll find Gillespie’s presentation here.
