That moment when New York City realized that it doesn't have to resort to clogging its curbs and sidewalks with loose bags of trash and can instead rely on sophisticated technology: Trash cans
Car brain in the comment thread...
Trash bags take up exactly as much space as a trash bag for exactly as long as it is on the sidewalk. Trash cans take up more than their maximum capacity regardless of how full they are, 24 hours a day.
And the tweeter's reply...
Despite having the best public transit system in America, New York City has 3 million on-street parking spaces, more than 95% of which are free, and your concern is… trash cans taking up too much space? Sorry, but if you love the rats so much, why don't you marry one?
Somebody in this thread mentioned the underground trash cans that they have in the Netherlands. So much in the US comes down to a simple concept yet so much of the media continues writing 1,000,000s of more words to pretend that isn't true.
Companies and governments don't want to spend money for the public good. If there's a cheaper, - cough - shittier solution - they'll do that instead.