Piled-up snow trucked out of downtown Bend

A couple days after the big dump on Central Oregon, some streets are still piled high with snow. No one likes driving in too much of it, and luckily, most of the main roads in Bend, especially downtown, have been adequately plowed.

The big question is – what to do with all that snow? The answer is to move it somewhere else.

“We began to haul off snow from the downtown area,” Bend streets and operations director David Abbas said. “(Which is) where we’re really restricted for space on storing snow.”

Until they can remove it, all that snow has been piling up downtown. But as of right now, most of the snow has been piled between the street and the sidewalk, allowing both cars and pedestrians to get by without too much trouble.

But how do businesses feel about the city’s job on the streets and walkways?

“I think they did great,” Kim Cress, manager at Navidi’s Olive Oils and Vinegars in downtown, said Friday evening. “I was here both days through the storm, and they were out there from, gosh, even earlier than I got here. 10:00 until 7:00 at night or later.”

People walking on the streets had a similar, if slightly more critical view of the city’s handling of the snow.

“I get how it is pretty hard to take care of all snow, because it all came at once,” one pedestrian said. “But I think they should’ve been more prepared for it. Because it does snow here, and it snows a lot every year.”

“We need to do a little more to get rid of the snow,” another said. “My husband’s waiting across the street because there’s nowhere to park. And at the same time, I have empathy that there’s a lot going on, and kind of weighing the scales on the priority of parking vs. main thoroughfares.”

The city of Bend said its currently removing snow from downtown in dump trucks, and will continue for the next few days.