I bragged a bit last week about the resilience of my 20-minute neighborhood in the face icy weather.
At the beginning of week two, it’s becoming increasing obvious to me that this is only possible because of the work of a lot of committed people, including:
- Our local transit providers and especially their drivers
- The employees of local businesses who go to great lengths to get to work
- The folks who drive the trucks that keep my local grocery stores stocked
- UPS and Fedex folks who keep delivering Christmas packages no matter
- The postman who keeps the little red Netflix envelopes going back and forth so we don’t die of cabin fever…
Thanks to one and all for keeping us healthy and happen in our snow cocoon!
21 responses to “A Shout Out from the 20-minute Neighborhood”
I live in a 25 min neighborhood. Today:
*No garbage service
*No mail
*No UPS
*NO snow plow on my street
*NO transit less then a mile away.
Oh, and the hollywood movie store is closed eh.
Eloquently making my point. Thank you!
Yes, I know you’re going to respond that it’s all because the City didn’t plow your street. But they didn’t plow mine either. The City is focusing on 1300 miles of arterial lanes. Because my neighborhood is denser, those arterial lanes are more frequent.
If we had snow here on a regular basis, the City would own a lot more plows. As it is, they simply don’t have enough equipment to keep up with this weather. I know they’ve put in long hours but we’re not talking Buffalo, New York here.
I lived in upstate New York as a kid and the guy from the neighborhood gas station would strap a plow on his Jeep and clean driveways for everyone but my dad — rather than pay for the Jeep he had me! Scrawny 11 year old shoveling Lake Effect thigh-deep snow off a very long driveway. I never complain about other people’s attempts to keep roads and sidewalks clean.
The new Lovejoy Safeway has had more patrons during this time than I’ve noticed before. I guess that says something about walkable neighborhood theory.
I took the Streetcar down to 24 Hour Fitness this morning and then hit the new Safeway on my way home.
One thing that is somewhat disappointing is the state of the sidewalks. If more property owners took seriously their responsibility to keep their sidewalks shoveled, the walkability would go way up. I found myself walking in the street on Northrup on the way home.
I know they’ve put in long hours but we’re not talking Buffalo, New York here.
Hi Jeff, Hamburg NY here.
7 feet, 3 days. Man up, Portland.
Props to the Hawthorne Fedex Store for being open Sunday. And to Porque No! Lifesavers both, and both within walking distance for me. And Tri-Met of course, those guys never stop.
They kept the max going (blue), so TRIMET did what it was supposed to.
The failure of the bus system is not the fault of TRIMET.
Blame the highway departments for that.
Oh yea,I forgot, I took a walk around my 20 minute neighborhood around midnight, and noticed one thing that may be of interest to some of you:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1W5hKGGGJdM
I went to the “new Safeway” too and there was indeed a crowd there but happily not when I was done shopping. And it is nice to be able to walk to a major grocery store, especially seeing how Line 6 was not going down Columbia from the Safeway at 10th. Overall, I have to say, Safeway looked pretty normal.
the little red Netflix envelopes
Is the Intarweb thingee not enough for you?
especially their drivers
Operators, operators, operators! :) They have to do much more than just maneuvering a giant bread box. They have to do customer service (have knowledge of the transit system and passenger destinations), operate the lift or ramp and assist the handicap, sell fares, inspect fares and provide security. But SMART will be shut down tomorrow.
It’s too bad that Portland’s excellent planning system has created a neighborhood of “haves” that require a huge amount of money (or extensive public subsidy) to live in those “20-minute neighborhoods” while the middle-class is squeezed out, and must live in the areas that TriMet can’t serve, the City won’t serve, and on top of that is now losing work income because of an inability to commute, or if they can get to work – likely works in the service sector and is losing business (and thus business income).
I drove to work yesterday and had no problem. Only reason I’m not at work today is the ruts that were formed (due to improper plowing) is making it more dangerous for me to drive…and I’m not counting on TriMet today. Five buses were stranded while I made it to work yesterday A-OK. One of those buses was still there in the same exact location when I left work yesterday afternoon.
Chris Smith wrote: # The folks who drive the trucks that keep my local grocery stores stocked
#
# UPS and Fedex folks who keep delivering Christmas packages no matter
#
# The postman who keeps the little red Netflix envelopes going back and forth so we don’t die of cabin fever…
And, it should be noted that none of those would have been possible if it weren’t for well-maintained roads, maintained by an excellent road maintenance department. Not one of those things would have been possibly with any amount of public transit.
I want to thank the Oregon Department of Transportation for taking care of Barbur Boulevard/Highway 99W – no problems on that well-maintained highway.
No thanks to the Cities of Portland or Tigard who can’t maintain their streets (in the case of my street, it’s plowed but only for one lane, and USPS and FedEx won’t deliver on my street because of it, and I haven’t had a garbage pickup in two weeks because of it), or Washington County (whom created deep ruts in two streets I had to drive on today, causing one near wreck).
the little red Netflix envelopes – Is the Intarweb thingee not enough for you?
Actually at our house we can get video-on-demand from Netflix, iTunes and Amazon, but if we want the latest releases, we’re still stuck waiting for those red envelopes :-)
On that FedEx, UPS full-service thing . . . for some reason, UPS had no trouble getting here yesterday but a scheduled FedEx package was held up by forces beyond their control. Of course, FedEx may have been focused on people who hold accounts with them.
The postman did not arrive yesterday to pick up our red envelope, but we were able to use the Internets thingy to tell Netflix just how awful the X-Files “I want to believe” movie was.
(We use Netflix as an inexpensive way to see big-release pictures we’re quite certain we don’t want to pay to see in the theater. We sometimes put titles on the list months in advance of release without reading subsequent reviews. This was one of those cases.)
Update: The postman just arrived. Next up: Bee movie.
Bee? Trapped there with kids, huh?
Portland’s excellent planning system has created a neighborhood of “haves” that require a huge amount of money (or extensive public subsidy) to live in those “20-minute neighborhoods” while the middle-class is squeezed out, and must live in the areas that TriMet can’t serve, the City won’t serve
The middle-class has never-never-ever been squeezed out; they simply took advantage of government subsidies being handed out in the suburbs via free roads, interest deductions, and so on. Whatever services they aren’t getting now is simply paying the piper.
Nope, no kids… but we do have a 20-something friend who just insisted that we see this movie. We’ll see if we’re still friends later. :-)
I thought Bee Movies were those films that Ronald Reagan was in.
MRB wrote: The middle-class has never-never-ever been squeezed out; they simply took advantage of government subsidies being handed out in the suburbs via free roads, interest deductions, and so on.
Hmmm… Free roads? Almost all (if not all) subdivision streets are built by the developers, not the cities. Who built all those new streets in SoWa and the Pearl? I believe the City of Portland did…so where are those “free roads”?
Interest deductions? Those apply to downtown residents as well…that has nothing to do with where someone lives. (However, those breaks do tend to disadvantage someone who can’t afford to buy a home in Portland which is an increasing number…) Who gets the tax breaks? Certainly not someone in the suburbs…but SoWa and Pearl districts are certainly getting tax breaks.
If the argument is that the government unfairly subsidized cheap housing “way out wonder”, then wouldn’t the correction to that be to encourage cheap housing in the inner city? Instead, the government is subsidizing expensive housing, which only further encourages lower income folks to live further out…
Not to mention government programs that encourage gentrification (in the name of higher property values, which means higher property tax collections, but forces lower income folks to move further away from the inner city…)
Maybe “squeezed out” wasn’t the right choice of words. “Kicked out of the airplane without a parachute”, maybe???
I figure someone somewhere is going to ask/mention this eventually…
I wonder what the carbon footprint of dealing with the snowstorm is, if it’s environmentally worth it, and if we’d be better off by practically closing the city and restricting any and all travel to that necessary to sustain peoples’ lives (as in get to food, shelter, and clothing).