Matthew Tzuker is a writer who lives in Portland.
For a small, walkable city, Portland was a nightmare to get around this winter.
Until a recent warm-up, snow had calcified into piles resembling a dead and dirty Yeti separating the road from the sidewalk. Pools of muck gathered in low places only to freeze by morning, awaiting ankles to sprain and tailbones to bruise.
Look, if you are going to live in a city at high latitude, in a state known for its toughness, you better be willing to tromp through some slush and drive around some tight corners. The way life should be ain’t always Vacationland. But I don’t think its wrong for Portlanders to expect a little better.
Much of our challenges were baked in and laid a century ago. As soon as the cold begins, the red bricks that charmed summer’s visitors turn angry. Fallen leaves on the brick are slippery when wet and somehow more slippery when dry. When the snow and ice arrive, every block of undulating cobblestone requires a new strategy.
Sometimes it feels like the city isn’t even trying. Streetlights are out everywhere. Public stretches of sidewalk go untreated.
A diligently shoveled and salted section of sidewalk might offer brief sanctuary but will end in an icy pile of plowed snow, forcing you to either backtrack or take your chances that the crust of the mound will hold. In the first days after a storm, many of us abandon the rules of polite society and just walk in the street. Generally, drivers politely oblige but winter driving has its own perils. In addition to pedestrians where they usually are not, embankments encroach on already narrow roads and snow piles block already challenging sight lines. The low sun always shines in your eyes no matter which direction you are driving.
But sometimes it feels like the city isn’t even trying. Streetlights are out everywhere. Public stretches of sidewalk go untreated.
As columnist Leslie Bridgers recently pointed out, the internet has taken notice of the daily hazards. In front of my kid’s school, there’s a puddle of muck. Sometimes it’s frozen; sometimes it’s liquid, sometimes it’s a surprise. There is no way around it. Every child coming from that direction must battle the puddle, every day, while cars wait and watch at the busy intersection. It has been that way for years and would take only a shovelful of give-a-damn to fix.
Portland traffic lights are a modern marvel, timed with such precision as to make it mathematically impossible for a driver to ever make a green light. But when you approach these intersections — some of which are confusing under the best of circumstances — and the fading white arrows are obscured by white snow, and your city hasn’t even hung a simple, cheap sign to help, it’s easy to wonder where your ample property taxes have gone.
As it is, Portland moves through the winter on the good will of its residents, kindly pausing for others to pass, chipping the ice in front of their doors (sometimes). I lived in Boston during the Snowmageddon of 2015, and Bostonians were far less gracious. I remember Mayor Dion making this an issue during his campaign, stating, I’m paraphrasing, that safety wasn’t just about crime but also the ability of people to get around the city without hazard. It was a nice statement but I’ve seen little progress.
These concerns are small things in a world of big problems. No one is expecting perfection. But it sure would be nice in these times to see a government fix some things. Maybe we can give it another shot next winter.