City cleaning and winter services

"Cleaning" means much more than just sweeping the street with a road sweeper.

Street cleaning
includes the removal of dirt and waste

• on roadways and sidewalks
• on the many traffic islands
• on the central reservation
• on cycle paths
• in parking lots
• on planted traffic calming measures
• on grass verges along footpaths and cycle paths and
• in the vicinity of tree grates.

In addition:

• Regular emptying and maintenance of the waste bins
• cleaning the market areas
• cleaning after major events, carnival parades, inner-city festivals, Sundays open for business and
• Removing road contamination, for example after accidents or when truck loads have fallen onto the road.

• the removal of large quantities of leaves in the fall
• removing weeds from roads and paths
• parked vehicles that make continuous cleaning difficult and
• the removal of dog excrement that the owner has left lying around - whether intentionally or not.

Which streets and paths are cleaned and how often is specified in the City of Aachen's street cleaning regulations.

To the street cleaning statutes

Despite the enormous effort of people and machines: To keep our Aachen clean and make it even more attractive, we, the employees of the city cleaning service, and you, the citizens of our city, must work hand in hand!

If you have any further questions or suggestions about waste bins in particular or street cleaning in particular, our employees at the Waste Management and City Cleaning Service Center (see contact above right) will be happy to help you.

When most people are still asleep, the drivers of the mechanized winter service clear and grit the roads with their 35 gritting vehicles and ensure safe conditions on around 1,200 roads or road sections with a length of around 1,500 kilometers throughout the city.
As it is not technically possible to clear and grit all lanes at the same time in snowy or icy conditions, the roads, cycle paths and crosswalks are classified into three levels of urgency in order of importance to traffic.

Urgency level 1
From 4.00 a.m., the first roads to be cleared of snow and ice are those with particular traffic significance. These include main roads and through roads, roads for local public transport and access roads to hospitals, schools and fire stations. They also include roads leading to commercial and industrial areas, safe and busy crosswalks and cycle paths on main roads and through roads.
By the time stage 1 has been completed in full operation at around 7.00 a.m., the winter service drivers have already covered a distance of 555 km.

Priority level 2
Following on from level 1, the approximately 457 km of priority level 2 roads are managed. These primarily include connecting roads and residential collector roads, medium-frequented cycle paths and medium-frequented crosswalks.

Priority level 3
Level 3 includes purely residential and residential roads. Winter road maintenance on these roads is carried out after level 2 and covers a gritting distance of 423 km.

The implementation of winter road maintenance on the individual traffic areas is based on the clearing and gritting plans. These are updated annually and specify the binding sequence of the clearing and gritting measures to be carried out. The obligation to clear and grit also applies on Sundays and public holidays.

Within built-up areas, there is only an obligation to grit the roadways at important and dangerous locations. Outside the built-up area, gritting is only mandatory for particularly dangerous road areas.
A road area is considered dangerous if, due to its special design or condition, the possibility of an accident is obvious even if road users exercise the care generally required in winter (e.g. sharp, blind bends or bends that are otherwise difficult to negotiate, steep gradients, blind junctions and road junctions as well as bridges and roads along watercourses that tend to become slippery).
Important traffic areas are primarily busy through roads, local thoroughfares of classified roads and busy inner-city main roads.

In parallel to the mechanical winter road clearance service, the approximately 270 employees of the manual winter road clearance service ensure road safety at 223 intersections, 27 pedestrian zones, 183 crosswalks, 410 footpaths, 81 cycle paths, 18 bridges and 64 stairways, usually from 5 a.m. onwards.

To ensure the safety of pedestrian traffic, footpaths within built-up areas, where these do not exist, corresponding strips at the edge of the carriageway, corresponding areas in pedestrian areas and traffic-calmed areas as well as shared cycle paths and footpaths must be cleared and gritted.
The City of Aachen is only obliged to clear and grit to the extent that the obligation to clear and grit has not been transferred to the street residents by the street cleaning and charging statutes of December 14, 1987, as amended.

The respective property owners are responsible for removing snow and ice from footpaths.

Only blunting agents such as sand or grit may be used as gritting agents. Exceptions to this rule are only permitted if the use of blunting gritting agents is not sufficient, is not effective and therefore poses a risk to the health of pedestrians (e.g. icy roads, stairways, steep inclines).
The sidewalks must be kept free of snow to a width of 1.5 meters as required for pedestrian traffic and gritted in icy conditions.

The obligation to maintain sidewalks in winter also extends to the area of public transport stops and school bus stops as well as all crosswalks set up for pedestrian traffic (e.g. traffic lights, crosswalks, dropped kerbs). At these points, the sidewalks must be kept clear of snow up to the kerb and gritted in icy conditions to ensure that access and egress is as safe as possible.

On working days from 7.00 a.m. to 8.00 p.m., snow and slippery conditions must be removed immediately after the snowfall has stopped or the slippery conditions have arisen. Snow that has fallen after 8 p.m. and ice that has formed must be removed by 7 a.m. (on Sundays and public holidays by 9 a.m.) the following day.