Featured image: East Broadway at Perkins Square in South Boston, circa 1940s. Photo: City of Boston Archives via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0). Historical photo, not current conditions.
South Boston street cleaning has about five weeks left in 2026. The City of Boston’s daytime street sweeping program runs from April 1 to Nov. 30 in South Boston and most other neighborhoods, and cars left in a posted zone can be ticketed and towed. This guide covers how to find your South Boston street cleaning schedule, the usual times and days, the fifth-week and holiday rules, towing costs, and what happens from December on.
When South Boston street cleaning ends
Boston Public Works says daytime neighborhood street cleaning runs April 1 through Nov. 30 in every neighborhood except the North End, South End and Beacon Hill. Those three run from March 1 to Dec. 31. In South Boston, daytime parking restrictions are not enforced in December or March, and there is no posted sweeping in January or February. Daytime sweeping returns April 1, 2027.
Main roads are different. The city’s nighttime street cleaning program covers main roads, arterials and commercial roads all year. The city says that if a posted street sweeping sign shows no months, the parking restriction is in effect year-round.
South Boston street cleaning schedule and times
The best way to check your street is the city’s lookup at boston.gov or its alert site, notify.boston.gov. You can search your address and sign up for an email reminder the day before your street is cleaned. The city says to always follow the posted sign if it differs from the website or reminder email.
The city’s open data portal, Analyze Boston, publishes a street sweeping schedule file that Public Works describes as a legacy dataset. It was updated Oct. 22, 2026. Its South Boston district rows show patterns that match most signs in the neighborhood:
- Times: 144 of the 275 South Boston street sections are swept 9 a.m. to 1 p.m., and 113 are swept 1 p.m. to 5 p.m.
- Weeks: 123 sections are swept on the first and third weeks of the month, 117 on the second and fourth weeks, and 33 every week.
- Days: Thursday and Friday are the most common sweeping days in the file, followed by Tuesday and Wednesday.
- Early mornings: sections of East and West Broadway are listed for 5 a.m. to 7 a.m. on Mondays and Tuesdays.
- Overnight, year-round: sections of Summer Street, Congress Street and Seaport Boulevard are listed for 12:01 a.m. to 7 a.m. every night, all year.
The file lists about 100 named streets in the South Boston district. Because it is a legacy file, treat it as a guide and check your sign.
The fifth-week rule and holidays
The city says streets swept every week are also swept in the fifth week of a month. Streets swept every other week usually are not, so parking restrictions are not enforced then, unless the sign lists the fifth week. Over the rest of the 2026 season, the fifth occurrence of a weekday in the month falls on Thursday, Oct. 29, Friday, Oct. 30, and Saturday, Oct. 31, and on Sunday, Nov. 29, and Monday, Nov. 30. If you are unsure whether those count on your street, follow the sign.
Street cleaning is canceled on city holidays, and the city sends cancellation notices to people signed up for alerts. Public Works says some holidays suspend daytime sweeping while night sweeping continues. The remaining holidays in the season are Veterans Day, Wednesday, Nov. 11, and Thanksgiving, Thursday, Nov. 26. Check the city’s list of recognized holidays if you are unsure. The city also says it does not always cancel sweeping for rain.
South Boston street cleaning towing costs
Boston tickets and tows cars that violate posted street sweeping rules. Private companies working for the Transportation Department do the towing. The city lists the state-set maximum charges:
- $132 for the tow
- $35 for each 24 hours of storage
- a fuel surcharge set by the state Department of Public Utilities
To find a towed car, search the city’s online tow lookup by plate or call Boston Police at 617-343-4629. If you don’t know the plate, Boston Police or the Transportation Department at 617-635-3900 can help.
Before winter in South Boston
Late fall brings other curbside deadlines. See our guide to Boston leaf pickup weeks and holiday trash delays. Once sweeping ends, the city’s winter parking rules take over during storms; see Boston snow emergency parking rules. For neighborhood development news, read about the Marian Manor redevelopment plan.
More on South Boston street cleaning
- Public Works says it has changed the program to better align sweeping days with trash and recycling days.
- Across Boston, the city says more than 400 curb miles are maintained under the daytime program. The South Boston rows in the legacy file add up to about 61 miles of listed street sections.
- To report an error on a sign or the schedule, the city lists streetcleaning@boston.gov or 311.
- Some streets with long stretches are split into sections by cross street and by side (odd or even), so neighbors on the same street can have different days.
Sources
- City of Boston: Street cleaning in Boston
- City of Boston: Street cleaning alerts
- City of Boston: Street sweeping lookup
- Analyze Boston: Street sweeping schedules dataset (updated Oct. 22, 2026)
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