Adopt-A-Highway volunteers to get training, split money

QHow can I get the $250 Caltrans will pay to clean up our highways?

Can I just show up and send them a bill? … You can bet the state would love to pay $250 to Adopt-AHighway volunteers to do Caltrans workers’ jobs to help clean our freeways. A job like that would take 10 Caltrans employees, five trucks and two days to do four off ramps at a cost of thousands. … This is a great idea.

— Fred Lock, Michael Braley, Ann Thomas and others

AI agree this could be a terrific idea. Under this new plan, Caltrans isn’t going to pay just any random citizen who emails/calls them on a Saturday morning and says, “I’d like $250 to pick up trash on the highway today. Where do I go?”

Louie-the-Long-TimeLitter-Guru says:

“Volunteers are allowed to clean, submit and wait for the paperwork to be processed, schedule and attend a safety training, schedule and attend a physical drive-by of the section to be adopted, pick up hard hats, vests, grippers, and bags, and then schedule and offer the safety training to whoever is going to work on their Adopt-A-Highway team. It’s not going to be a snapyour-fingers kind of deal.

“It should also be clear it’s not $250 per person. Depending on how many people you can round up, you could divide the $250 by two or five or 10 people.”

Those interested in volunteering can visit CleanCA.com for more details and an online application, or call 866-ADOPTAHWY (886236-7824). And let’s not forget the many who take pride in collecting trash to keep the highways clean.

QThanks for publishing information about cleaning up our littered roadways.

My wife and I see bags of collected road trash set alongside I-280 in the Los Altos-Palo Alto area almost daily, ready to be picked up.

And the change in appearance is notable. It looks really GOOD!

Lately I’ve seen bicycle riders along Foothill Expressway picking up trash, too. They carry a milk crate strapped to their bike and, using tongs, stop and pick up junk as they ride along.

My friend, Ludwig, actually gets off his bike to pick up broken glass, nails, screws, etc. Coming from Germany, he laments the lack of respect so many people have for our roads and landscapes.

— Jim Thurber, Mountain View

ACheers to all who are helping.

QWe just returned from several days driving in Vermont.

What a breath of fresh air! No highway litter anywhere! And drivers were courteous and moved to the right after passing.

What happened?

— Walt D’Ardenne,

Cupertino

AI’m from Iowa where there’s much less litter than there is here. What are we doing wrong?