Other articles by Andrea Kelly:

$48K fee settlement OK'd with baseball team that left earlyQwest to move utility lines, freeing up 5 road projects Road runner : Pedestrian study ranks city 25th for safety Roadrunner: Tucson average when it comes to pedestrian safety Phase 2 of water-management plan cites 19 goals; focus is on coping with growth Budget woes shoot down public art at gun range What not to do when you meet photo radar Shooting-range work may omit public art Public art might be nixed from Pima County shooting range plan Sports Park's opening back on track

No one likes to drive or ride a bike on a street full of debris, but a reader recently questioned why she saw streets being cleaned during rush hour.

Carole E. McGuire spotted a street sweeper spinning away at Campbell Avenue and East Broadway at about 4:30 on a Wednesday afternoon.

"Why was a private street-sweeping company being used when we have city street sweepers being paid for with city taxes?" McGuire asked.

She said the sweeping company was Diggins and Sons Power Sweeping Inc., and she wondered who is paying the firm. Let's tackle that question first.

Diggins and Sons' work to build a floodwater detention basin at Cherry Field, just south of Campbell and Broadway, involves hauling a lot of dirt away, said Michael Graham, spokesman for the Tucson Department of Transportation.

Those doing the hauling are private contractors on that project, administered by the city, Pima County and the Army Corps of Engineers. The city asks contractors hauling dirt to keep the streets clean, Graham said. The contractor on the Cherry Field project hired Diggins and Sons to clean the streets. Graham didn't know why the area was being swept during rush hour.

The city does contract with a private street sweeper, and it isn't Diggins and Sons. The city-contracted street sweeper takes care of the arterial and collector streets, while the city's own sweepers clean the residential streets, Graham said. If the city didn't use a contractor it wouldn't get the streets cleaned as often, he said.

The city-funded Sun Tran bus service won an award for finding innovative ways to increase ridership, says a news release from the Federal Transit Administration. Nine other agencies received the national awards.

The awards were given to organizations that used creative initiatives to get at least 5 percent more passengers per year for a two-year period.

Sun Tran won for acquiring 38 biodiesel buses and responding to customers' requests based on research. Using riders' responses to a survey, Sun Tran made an effort to increase driver friendliness and on-time service.

The other winners were transit systems in Macomb, Ill.; Pulaski, Va.; Monroe, La.; Durham, N.H.; Bourbonnais, Ill.; Denton, Texas; Spokane, Wash.; Fort Worth, Texas; and Dover, Del.

Question: "There is a line of huge, dead trees along the north side of Orange Grove Road just west of Oracle Road. Many large branches hang over the road and eventually will fall. It appears that somebody is likely to get hurt. Are there plans on having these hazards removed?" Dave Heisley wrote.

Answer: Pima County's Transportation Department has asked the property owners for permission to trim them. They are on private property, but they hang over into the county's right of way, Priscilla Cornelio, the department director, said.