I’m a Wisconsinite at heart. When I see snow in the forecast, I start acting like a giddy little school boy. The experience of a walk in fresh snowfall on a quiet winter evening is something I cherish. Out here, significant snowfall is pretty rare – a once a winter if you’re lucky type of deal.

So when I saw the forecast for a late February dusting last week, I figured it wouldn’t stick much at home. I even texted my dad on the bus home from work that I didn’t expect there to be much snow on the ground. Turns out we got 6+ inches, with North Portland seeing almost 11. The second snowiest day ever in Portland! And yes, it was scary to read the news reports about the traffic situation. ODOT and PBOT both were seemingly as surprised as I was, so highways were jammed and people had 12+ hour commutes home.

ODOT in particular was forced to close parts of the urban highway network for 36 hours or longer, since abandoned vehicles and ice prevented typical maintenance from occurring. This is obviously pretty ridiculous, considering that ODOT actually does have fairly substantial snow removal equipment – the Cascades are snowy! But it also points to a transportation network that is both expensive, and very brittle.

Look, I’ll spare the long-winded rant about how cars are bankrupting the American people – but just operationally speaking it’s pretty nightmarish. People were stranded overnight because they had to drive to/from work in a snowstorm. That is not how good transportation systems operate. In fact, some cities built entire subway networks because of winter storms shutting down their transportation networks. Portland isn’t likely to follow Boston and New York’s lead here, but I just had to get that one in.

Snow days are something I love, and good cities make them even better. You don’t have to worry so much about running out of food and not being able to drive when you can just walk to the store. No matter how dire the traffic situation is, the humble pedestrian can always count on their own two feet to get them around.

It’s Not All Good

People here don’t shovel. I guess I get it, snow shovels are not really something the average Pacific Northwesterner has. Lots of Portlanders rent, and feel that maintaining the pedestrian right of way is their landlords responsibility (they are likely technically correct). Walking in the snow is fine, walking on sheets of ice is not. Shoveling early and often prevents ice from accumulating as people continually tramp down the snow.

PBOT did tweet a bit about how people should shovel, but I’d say from walks that less than 25% of property owners shoveled – and the ones who did rarely cleared the whole walk. And the city did a pretty miserable job clearing sidewalks on publicly owned property.

The approaches to the Hawthorne Bridge were properly dangerous. The fact that the county courthouse still has these barriers up (from 2020) impeding on the right of way is bad enough – but the lack of care shown in ice removal really bothered me. Multnomah County can’t be bothered to keep a sidewalk cleared, on the most popular approach to the most popular pedestrian bridge in the city. It’s shameful.

It was bad enough that I thought about shoveling the entire city myself. Eventually, I decided to just buy a snow shovel and do our courtyard and sidewalk. Our property management company kindly sent us an email effectively saying they wouldn’t bother. And I like shoveling (well when I only have to do it once a year).

I still like an icy walk though. Part of my whole spiel lately is how interesting it is to explore places on foot that you “aren’t supposed to” – and this extends to winter walking as well. When the weather takes a turn, people get in their little cars to do everything – unwilling to experience the elements.

Of course it’s not all masochism. The quiet of freshly fallen snow in particular is lovely. On my snowy ride over the Tilikum, I was struck by how little I could hear from the bridge. Usually, the nearby Marquam is loud enough to notice even with headphones in. But on that day, it was just me – alone in Bridgetown on a bridge. I guess it really does drive home the “Cities Aren’t Loud, Cars Are Loud” bit (relevant Not Just Bikes video).

Despite all the good, what stood out to me was more of what didn’t work. Both cars and the city at large both properly failed to function for days on end. And while people are usually quick to point out “well it only snows once a year in Portland, so do we really need plows?” I think that’s a bit beside the point – what we need to change in the city is not the number of snow plows (although one or two more might be a good move), but the way people get around by default.