How Oregon’s transportation agency is preparing for expected snow

Inclement weather is in the forecast for much of Oregon this weekend, with almost all counties under a winter storm watch or warning.

The Oregon Department of Transportation has been clearing roads and responding to closures since late Monday when the first round of storms hit the state. ODOT received $19 million last month from the Legislature to shore up winter maintenance services in the wake of its budget shortfall. The money will allow the agency to remove overtime restrictions on road maintenance staff and to purchase deicing chemicals and trucks used for snow plowing.

ODOT Communications Director Kevin Glenn joins us with more details about the agency’s priorities this winter and how it’s preparing for the incoming weather.

This transcript was created by a computer and edited by a volunteer.

Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. Severe winter weather is in the forecast for much of Oregon this weekend with almost all counties under a winter storm watch or warning. The Oregon Department of Transportation has been clearing roads and responding to closures since late Monday when the first round of storms hit the state. Their work has been helped by a recent infusion of cash from lawmakers. The Legislature gave the agency $19 million last month to shore up winter maintenance services in the wake of its budget shortfall. Kevin Glenn is ODOT’s communications director. He joined us to talk about what to expect on roads this weekend and the agency’s ongoing funding challenges. We talked about three hours ago. I asked him what he was expecting statewide for the evening and the weekend.

Kevin Glenn: As you mentioned, this last week had a ton of snow all around the state. Mt. Bachelor, I think has had something like 75 inches of snow in the last few days. And then we expect that to continue over tonight and through the weekend. So, in the Portland metro area, luckily, it sounds like the snow is going to happen a little later than we thought it was going to. We were really worried it was going to be around that sort of evening rush hour, just like it was last year when everything just kind of broke.

Miller: Turned into parking lots.

Glenn: Yes, exactly. So I think luckily it looks like it might happen a little later. Our message is still, if you are home, please stay home. If you can head home soon, please do so.

Miller: Do people listen to those messages?

Glenn: Yeah.

Miller: Can you track it? Do you know if when you say, “For real, don’t go out unless you need to,” I just always wondered if people listen to you or if they just do what they’re going to do?

Glenn: I hope so. I think so. When I was driving over here, it seemed like there were a lot fewer cars on the road today. Places like PPS closing a little earlier puts a lot of those students on the road earlier in the day, their parents picking them up earlier in the day. So the thing is you don’t necessarily need everyone to stay home in order to actually have success out of it because really all you need is room for a plow to make a way. And if you’re on a freeway, you’ve got three lanes and a shoulder on both sides in which to make that happen, but when you get everyone there and they all get stuck and then they leave their vehicles, then it’s very hard to recover from.

Miller: What are the top regions of concern right now?

Glenn: Yeah, absolutely. So we expect basically cold fronts moving in over the entire state and it’s gonna make it very, very cold over the next few days. So right now is probably as warm as it’s going be today and it’s just going to get colder and colder and colder. Some parts of the state, it’s gonna be like negative-14 [degrees] in Meacham in Eastern Oregon, which is too cold, but it’ll be real cold even in the Portland metro area.

And then we are worried about, we think there’s going to be quite a bit of snowfall tonight this evening and tonight in Portland and then maybe some freezing rain south of Salem. And then we’re going to see a lot of snow in the passes and then a lot of wind, especially in the Gorge. So it might be almost blizzard conditions in the Gorge.

Miller: And then not much of a thaw, right?

Glenn: Right. Exactly. Since it’s so cold, it’s going to be cold for quite a few days. So, whatever falls on the ground is probably going to stick around for quite a few days.

Miller: What’s your goal in terms of frequency of service right now - how often a patch of highway that your agency is responsible for is actually going to get a plow on it or get a deicer on it or get gravel on it?

Glenn: Well, it really just depends on the road. What we try to do is we look at our roads and see where people are most likely to travel and then we sort of look at where the hotspots are, where there’s like a really steep curve or something like that. So, on the hotspots, we try to apply salt beforehand or deicer or gravel and then on those places where people are regularly traveling like the passes, we’ll try to have those have more snow plowing activity than maybe some of the less traveled roads.

Miller: Just behind you, just in front of me right now - the city of Portland calls this Macadam Avenue. The state calls this Hwy 43. This is a state highway, one of a lot that go through the city of Portland and just like a lot of cities in the state have state highways. Is this up to ODOT to plow?

Glenn: Yeah, I believe so. Yeah. We would plow our state highways in the city.

Miller: So why not just have some kind of set up where - I don’t know, I’m making this up, but let’s say it costs $500 to plow a road to pay a state snowplow driver and to pay for the gas. Why not just give that money to the Portland Bureau of Transportation and then free up ODOT to focus on places where nobody else is going to be plowing that anyway? [Where] nobody else has a plow that they would use?

Glenn: Well, I mean, I’m happy to pitch that idea to the delivery and operations folks. I think what I would argue just off the top of my head is, I assume Portland has a lot on its plate too, right? Portland does a great job of preparing for snowstorms. They’re doing the same thing right now. They’re looking at their hotspots on their network like Burnside and things like that, but they have a lot to manage. So I don’t know that they would be able…

Miller: That they would like my idea? [Laughter] It just seems to be a more efficient use of resources if they’re going to plow roads right near here and you’re going to come to do specific state highways in the middle of the city. It seems like a potential redundancy

that could be made more efficient.

Glenn: Yeah, maybe. I think, too, ODOT has offices everywhere. Yes, we’re the state agency, but we’ve got facilities all through the Portland metro area because the freeways and highways run all through the Portland metro areas. So it’s really easy for us to access these state highways because they’re close to our facilities.

Miller: So let’s turn to the bigger question right now and we can come back to this weekend and what else you want from drivers. But as I mentioned in my intro, you’re dealing with a major funding issue. Your agency sounded an alarm this year saying we don’t have enough money in the current biennium – two-year budget cycle – for road maintenance and things like snow removal. Lawmakers responded by providing an additional $19 million. What would have happened if you hadn’t gotten that money? Where would the cuts have been? Where would Oregonians have seen the effects?

Glenn: Yeah, absolutely. So they would have seen the effects, especially in big storms like this. So one of the things that we were having to do because of this budget crunch is basically really restrict our overtime. So in moments like this where you’ve got big snow falling in Central Oregon and on the passes and maybe even snow in the Coast Range and then snow in Portland, you can’t really move crews around. So the crews you have in that area just have to work extra hours in order to keep the road safe. And in a situation like that, we may have really struggled to be able to afford that. We would have had to really reduce the amount of response that we could do in a big storm like this.

Miller: Meaning, just more snow on the roads at 3 a.m. or at 5 p.m.?

Glenn: Exactly. Looking at that sort of triaging the roads you’ve got. So if we have this many state highways and this many interstates, if right now we can keep a level of service on more roads at a place that we feel comfortable, we’d have to say, “OK, this road is important but it’s not as important as this other road.” And we’re going to try to preserve service here and, and let service deteriorate over here. So it would have been very difficult.

Miller: So at least some chunk of that $19 million is going directly to overtime?

Glenn: Yep. So that $19 million allows us to restore overtime services so we can handle big storms like this. It also allows us to do pothole repair after the winter when the roads get damaged quite a bit. And then it does two other things: It lets us restart fog line striping on low volume roads in rural areas, and that’s that white line to your right when you’re driving through those areas that keeps you on the road; and then it allows us to repair or replace some of our very, very old snowplow trucks.

Miller: You did note in a recent press release that the agency took some actions like ordering fewer supplies or hiring fewer people before that stop gap funding was authorized last month by the Legislature. How much of that will have a permanent effect, or at least an ongoing effect, this biennium?

Glenn: I think in terms of the materials, we’re good there.

Miller: So now you can order more salt.

Glenn: Yeah, it’s not quite as simple as going to like the salt store, which I thought it might be. But yes, we were able to sort of sign new contracts for additional salt and gravel and all that stuff. So we feel pretty good about that.

In terms of permanent staffing, we are having to keep some permanent staffing positions open because this supplemental funding is awesome, it came at exactly the time we needed it, but it’s a one-time infusion of funding. You can’t really hire permanent staff with a one-time infusion of funding. So we do have some staff open as a result still.

Miller: In November of 2022, we actually talked about the hiring challenges for snowplow drivers, especially in Eastern Oregon and if I remember correctly, this wasn’t about not having money to hire people. It was the kind of employer issue that we’ve heard in so many sectors. It’s hard to find people to do the job. Is that still an issue?

Glenn: It’s still an issue in some of those really, really remote places in Eastern Oregon. We’ve got some facilities, especially like in Southeastern Oregon, where the crew actually works on site because there isn’t a town anywhere near this road for them to live in. And that is a challenge to hire folks. You got to have a very specific person who wants to do that

Miller: In Harney County, say?

Glenn: Yeah, exactly. So that’s still sort of a perennial challenge. I think we aren’t experiencing the sort of agency-wide difficulty hiring that most employers were last year. I think that’s calmed down quite a bit. So that sort of resolved itself, but we are keeping some positions open for these budgetary reasons. And essentially, it’s all a bit of a wash. So we’re at about the same staffing level as we were last year.

Miller: Am I right that the ODOT budget is something like $3 billion for two years?

Glenn: $3 billion every year. I think it’s $6 billion every two years.

Miller: Oh, man. OK. Well, then this question is even more salient. $6 billion dollars for two years? You just got $19 million and you’re saying this is going to make a huge difference. I can imagine a lot of listeners saying, what’s happening here? This gets us to the broader questions of the ODOT budget and why it is that $19 million can make such a difference when you have billions to spend in a year.

So first, if you don’t mind, just giving us a sense for where the money comes from, broadly, and what you can spend it on?

Glenn: Yeah, absolutely. Because this is the crux of the issue. It just doesn’t make sense without some sort of extra explanation. In terms of how the transportation system is funded, it’s basically funded with a few sources. It’s funded with the gas tax, it’s funded with vehicle fees like registration, titling stuff like that and then it’s funded in Oregon with a weight-mile tax on freight haulers. So those three things combined form the State Highway Fund. And then, in addition, we got more funding from the federal government last year because of the Infrastructure and Investment and Jobs Act, but a steady amount of funding from the federal government every year. And then we also, in Oregon, have a unique one-tenth of 1% payroll tax that allows us to actually fund public transit operations because constitutionally we are barred from doing so with our state highway fund dollars.

So those are the sort of the biggest sources that come into the agency. And then those sources go out of the agency. Of all that money that comes in, around half goes straight to cities and counties for their own transportation department budgets. And then what’s left, around half of that, has been dedicated by former Legislatures to paying for projects or paying for debt based on past projects. So of that big pot of money that comes into the agency, around 10% of it can be spent on agency operations, snow plowing, maintenance, things like that, which is how you can get a situation in which you can have a $6 billion biennial budget, which by any measure is quite a bit of money and yet still have such a big impact from $19 million. Because that $19 million isn’t just going into the $6 billion pot. It’s going into a much smaller pot that can actually pay for winter maintenance.

Miller: What’s happening with gas tax revenue in Oregon and around the country? People have probably heard at this point that it’s dropping because of fuel efficiency, because of the uptake in electric vehicles. But how big a drop are you seeing?

Glenn: Yeah. So right now, we are sort of at the flattening peak of it, I suppose. So it’s quite a bit less than it would have been if the fleet was still as inefficient as it was. Luckily the fleet is more efficient than it was.

Miller: It’s a good thing.

Glenn: It’s a great thing. It’s both in terms of, like a Camry, 30 years ago, is 30% less efficient than a Camry right now. That’s great on its own. And then also it’s great that 80,000 electric vehicles are sold or have been sold in Oregon and we expect that to keep going up. So people are doing the right thing and driving more efficient. It’s the central reason we’re on track to reduce carbon emissions from transportation by 60%. So, that’s wonderful. But it also has a knock-on effect of the less gas you use, the less you pay into the system. And the thing is if you’re still driving a car around, you’re still wearing down the roads. That still has a cost to the system.

So right now, gas tax revenues - the Legislature actually instituted a two-cent gas tax that took effect on January 1st, and they made this decision about seven years ago. It happened every few years…

Miller: This was for a big transportation bill to fund specific projects largely, right?

Glenn: Yeah, exactly. So they raised that. And so we’re at sort of a flattened peak of gas tax revenue and then we expect that decline to start next fiscal year. And it takes some time but it’s basically just permanent. People are never going to drive less efficient vehicles going forward. So every year you just see less and less gas tax and then at the same time, you have quite a bit of inflation in the last few years. We’ve gone through a very inflationary period, but even if you expect inflation to sort of level off in the near future of a few percentage points each year, that means that every dollar you’re getting buys less and less stuff every year and you’re getting fewer and fewer dollars

Miller: And you have to pay more for payroll as well?

Glenn: Yep.

Miller: So what are other states doing? This is a nationwide issue. What are other states doing to figure out new sustainable, ongoing models for transportation funding if gas taxes no longer make sense?

Glenn: In some ways, Oregon is kind of a leader on this. We instituted an operational road usage charge system, eight or nine [years ago]. It’s been a few years. And basically what that is, it’s very similar to the gas tax. Sort of concept is the more you use the road, the more you pay into the system. But rather than that being a fraction of your gas bill, when you go to the gas station, it is a per mile charge of, I think it’s two cents per mile. And you just get a bill at the end of the month. So that’s an operational system that other states are looking at.

Miller: Isn’t that optional in Oregon?

Glenn: It is. Yep, it’s optional and there’s some incentives to do so. So if you buy an electric vehicle in Oregon, you pay a higher registration fee to help partially offset the fact that you’re not buying any gas and you can reduce your higher registration fee by signing up for this program. It’s called OReGo.

Miller: These are, in the end though, policy questions for lawmakers as opposed to things that the agency is going to tell us what should happen?

Glenn: Absolutely. Yes. So this is really a decision up to the Legislature and the governor and we’re really encouraged by the fact that they’ve expressed a real interest in tackling this issue. They’ve talked about taking this up in the 2025 legislative session. As an agency, we’re not necessarily going to choose the path forward, but we’ll be able to work with them to show them the sort of pros and cons of each individual path and how they could put us on a more stable foundation.

Miller: Kevin, thanks very much.

Glenn: Yeah. Thank you.

Miller: Kevin Glenn is communications director for the Oregon Department of Transportation.

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