City to send e-mail alerts in advance of street cleaning

They tried fliers on windshields. They drove through neighborhoods in trucks, loudspeakers blaring.

Now, Boston has another idea to help city residents avoid having their cars towed: e-mail.

The city is launching a pilot program in the North End that would allow residents to join a list to receive e-mail, text message, and a cellphone call the night before the city plans to tow cars in their neighborhoods.

"People's lives are so busy," said Mayor Thomas M. Menino. "They don't remember when to put the trash out, or when it's the day for street cleaning. If we could text message them or e-mail them, that will be a very big help to them."

The city is testing the "No Tow" program in the North End over the next month - until street cleaning stops for the winter on Nov. 30 - with the hopes of rolling it out citywide in April.

The e-mails will initially go out to all residents who sign up in a neighborhood, listing all of the streets that will be cleaned the next day. By spring, the city will have a system in place in which residents can plug in their address, allowing the city to give more targeted warnings, by individual street, according to Bill Oates, the city's chief information officer.

In April the city began towing cars for the first time in an effort to more thoroughly clean the streets. Using 10 private contractors and teams of Boston Police Department employees working overtime, the city began towing and ticketing nearly 200 cars a day. Previously, the city rarely towed vehicles parked in street-cleaning zones, opting instead to issue tickets and sweep around the offending cars.

Parking in the wrong spot is an expensive mistake, costing at least $130 in fines and fees. There is also a storage fee of $20 each day the vehicle is impounded. The city keeps $10 from each tow.

The city's aggressive new policy caught many residents off guard and brought a storm of complaints. Residents said they can't keep straight the kaleidoscope of parking rules requiring them to vacate curbsides on certain days of the month. Others report missing or damaged signs that make it difficult to decipher the rules.

Residents say the elimination of street parking has also left too few places to park in congested neighborhoods such as the South End and Beacon Hill.

"We've done fliering, we've done bullhorns, we've done public outreach in local papers - this is just one more thing we can do," said transportation commissioner Thomas J. Tinlin. "The ultimate goal is not to tow your car. It's to clean the street."

A chief opponent of the crackdown, Councilor at Large Michael Flaherty, has told stories of a mother carrying two young children chasing a truck that was towing her car down the street. In another instance, a grieving man had his car towed while he was at his deceased brother's house, picking out an outfit for the burial.

"People are having their property taxes increased, many folks having to work two or three jobs just to live in the city, and on top of that we burden them with onerous fines and towing?" said Flaherty, who added that signs should also be improved to help residents understand the regulations. "We need to be a little bit more sensitive and compassionate. So I agree that a notification system is appropriate."

Matt Viser can be reached at maviser@globe.com.