By Dan Murphy
Adam Harper, an attorney living on Revere Street who coded the StreetSweep app for iPhones as a free service for his neighbors in his spare time.
Thanks to a new free app for iPhones called StreetSweep, Beacon Hill residents can now more easily find parking, remember where they park, and navigate the neighborhood’s street cleaning schedules.
“It’s such a useful tool that I was surprised it didn’t already exist,” said Adam Harper, a 28-year-old attorney living on Revere Street, who coded the app in his spare time over the course of around a year before launching it about a month ago as a service for his neighbors.
StreetSweep, which has no ads and has actually cost Harper a small sum (along with his time) to develop, tracks street-cleaning schedules block by block, giving users a heads-up before the sweeper comes to their immediate area.
A neighborhood map color-codes every street by ‘cleaning urgency,’ with Red meaning street cleaning is scheduled within 24 hours, so users should move their car or avoid parking there; Yellow meaning street cleaning is scheduled for 72 hours or less; and Green meaning no street cleaning is scheduled for at least 72 hours. Users can adjust these times in their settings to suit their personal preferences.
“So for example if you often leave your car for a week, you can increase the Green number to a week,” explained Harper.
Via its alert system, StreetSweep sends users three tiers of ‘push notification,’ including the first on the evening before a scheduled street cleaning; a second alert one hour before a cleaning is scheduled to start; and a final alert to notify just ahead of the cleaning. It also notifies the user when they park in a “Red Zone.” The user can select and customize which of the three tiers they want to receive notifications for as well.
StreetSweep has an ‘open driving mode,’ which offers a map that follows a user’s position while searching for a nearby parking spot. It also has a ‘live status card’ showing the cleaning status for both sides of their street in real time. A live activity option on the user’s screen allows them to view this option without even unlocking their phone.
When they park, the user taps once, and the app automatically pins their vehicle’s location. The ‘My Car’ tab then provides the user simple walking directions back to their vehicle.
“You don’t have to share your location or your personal data when your location turns on, and we don’t collect any personal data,” said Harper, who also designed and launched ParkPod – an app for iPhones meant to help facilitate pet meetups by showing which dogs are presently playing in nearby parks.
Via StreetSweep’s ‘Spot Sharing,’ which is still in the beta stage, when a user pulls out of a spot, they can notify others on the platform of the newly available parking space. While this option works, “bugs” can still occur, so if they do, Harper asks users to report them internally to help make the app run more seamlessly in the future.
StreetSweep offers a map so a user can notify their neighbors if they see temporary No Parking signs, as well as any posted occupancy permits.
A Home Screen widget and Lock Screen widget both show the user their next scheduled cleaning at a single glance, and when Boston experiences snow emergencies, the city’s weather alerts automatically overlay regular schedules on the app.
Meanwhile, StreetSweep is designed as an “open app,” according to Harper, and while this feature hasn’t gone public yet, someone in another part of Boston will eventually be able to customize the app for their own neighborhood, with some assistance from Harper.
“It could work in all of Boston,” said Harper, who is considering expanding StreetSweep to South Boston next. “I’d be interested in having conversations with the City of Boston because [the app] could easily be expanded to all of Boston.”
While the StreetSweep app isn’t currently available for use on Android phones, it’s expected to be soon, said Harper.
Visit https://apps.apple.com/us/app/street-sweep-boston/id6761667980 to download the StreetSweep app for iPhones.