SWEEP:BOS will keep your forgetful Bostonian butt off the tow lot

I don’t own a car. Actually, I’ve never owned one. I just don’t want one. I live in the city, I work in the city, and I hate driving. But also, I hate how people act when they’re behind the wheel. They just get so pissed—especially here in Boston.

A few months ago, I got a glimpse into one reason why they’re all so angry. And then a few days ago, I found a solution (to this one source of driver anger, at least).

My boyfriend went away on business and left his car parked outside our South End apartment. He was only gone for a few days, and mentioned I might have to move the car for street cleaning. I checked the street-cleaning dates on the streets we park on – 1st Tuesday and 2nd Thursday – and figured since it was only the 5th of the month I’d only have to move the car once. So that was fine. I moved the car from the 1st Tuesday street-cleaning street to the 2nd Thursday one – totally forgetting that the first of the month fell on a Thursday. Which meant that in 2 days the 2nd Thursday would be upon me.

Needless to say, the car got towed.  It cost $120 to get the stupid thing off the tow lot. Plus they gave me a $40 ticket for who even knows what. Basically, it sucked.

Coming out of this, I can safely assume the whole street cleaning/car towing madness must be a reason why city drivers are so frustrated all the time. So when a co-worker came to me with the iPhone app he had just launched, its value proposition really hit home.

The app is called SWEEP:BOS and it's already a hit among Bostonians.
You select your Boston neighborhood and the application tells you every street-cleaning date you could ever need. It also supplies you with alerts to your iPhone, making it virtually impossible for you to forget to move your car.

Here are some more SWEEP:BOS features:

• Saving your vehicle’s parking spot location
• Adding/editing streets, blocks and cleaning day/times
• Adding/removing neighborhoods
• Snow Emergency information
• Street cleaning color notification (Green = 7 days out, Yellow = 3 days out, Red = 24 hours out)
• Neighborhood information updated regularly and available for download

SWEEP:BOS is $2.99 on the iTunes app store, and works for both iPhone and iPod Touch.

I’m down with this app… because I’ll be damned if I’m ever caught on a tow lot again. They remind me of 70’s horror movies.