Small Urban Maintenance Vehicles

Cities designed at the scale of the human, rather than the scale of the automobile, often feature compact street dimensions.

But - normal city functions like street maintenance and cleaning must still take place!

This can effectively be accomplished with small urban maintenance vehicles.  Modern compact urban maintenance and cleaning vehicles are effective at their jobs and are often even small enough to share sidewalks with pedestrians.   A variety of manufacturers produce these vehicles today.

Here are some great examples recently seen in action in the public spaces of Budapest:


Dulevo 850 Mini:

This first example is one of the real work horses of urban street cleaning in Budapest.  The Dulevo 850 Mini, available worldwide, is produced by the Dulevo International company in their facility near Parma, Italy.

The machine is small enough that it is used for sidewalk cleaning in Budapest.

Ronda Cleaning Machines (RCM) Street Flusher:

The very compact street flushing vehicle seen in these photos appears to be a slightly older variation of RCM's current compact street cleaning product, the Patrol Suction Street Sweeper.  The RCM company is located in Modena, Italy and distributes their machines quite widely around the world.

Grillo PK 1400 4WD: 

This small municipal utility vehicle is seen used flexibly for a variety of tasks in Budapest, from hauling landscaping materials to collecting trash.  The rear load bed is able to tip to the back or to the sides.  The Grillo Agrigarden Machines company is located in Cesena, Italy and distributes its machines in 55 countries across 5 continents. 

Smart fortwo Police Car: 

While not exactly a maintenance vehicle, it's worth noting that Budapest has begun incorporating Smart cars into its fleet of police vehicles.  The tiny "fortwo" model is particularly well-suited to winding, narrow, pedestrian-heavy streets such as those of the medieval Castle District.  With no back seat, these cars are intended primarily to support tasks such as traffic enforcement.