Skip to main content
During the snow, I heard the roads in Clackamas County were better than Multnomah County roads. Do the two counties have radically different road maintenance protocols? Or is it microclimates? Wasn't the Metro government supposed to create more cohesiveness in the region?
—Homebound in Multnomah County
The United States government was supposed to create more cohesiveness in the region, too, and we all know how that turned out.
Still, I understand your impulse, Homebound—now that the galvanizing common enemy of Snowpocalypse has been vanquished, it's natural that we'd want to get back to our usual regimen of back-biting, finger-pointing and petty recriminations.
But in this case, there's really no way to confirm or refute the anecdotal evidence you're offering.
Before we go any further, we should note that Multnomah County does not maintain roads within Portland city limits, so we're actually comparing Clackamas County's road maintenance to that of the city of Portland, not Multnomah County.
The two entities entered the fray with comparable resources. Portland, with approximately 5,000 miles of road, had 55 snowplows at the ready. Clackamas County, with 1,797 miles, had 18. Thus, each jurisdiction had just about one snowplow for every 100 miles of roadway in its care.
Related: Seattle Loans Us 11 Snow Plows, Increasing Portland's Fleet by 20 Percent
That may not seem like very many, but the truth is that most of our suffering in the past few weeks wasn't due to a lack of plows. The problem was that conventional snowplows are no use against the icy, hard-packed ridges that our roads had degenerated into within the first few days.
Of course, there's now talk of expanding or upgrading the fleet, just in case this year's weather represents a "new normal." There's no reason to believe that's the case, however; climate-change projections continue to predict less, not more, snow in our future.
Best to let the blizzards be, to do what they do best: give us something to blame on our political enemies. Is it too early to start talking about "Ted Wheeler's Katrina"? How about "Jim Bernard's Benghazi"? Any takers for "Snowpocagate"? Anybody?
Questions? Send them to dr.know@wweek.com.
