Here in Portland, Oregon, we take pride in our independent streak and our position at the forefront of the green movement, thanks in large part to the legacy of the hippies that landed here in the 1960s.
So I was not surprised to hear that we had a charging station for electric vehicles at a curbside spot downtown, near our World Trade Center. Hybrids, EVs, and cars powered by biodiesel are wildly popular with hipsters and hippies alike in Portland, so it seemed right that the city would be on the bleeding edge of personal transportation technology with the installation of this charger, courtesy of Portland General Electric.
I decided to find out how many chargers there were in the metro area. I thought it would make a good conversation starter at holiday-season parties: "Did you know Portland has X number of public charging stations?" I mean, we did just have an electric-car dealership open this fall. I searched ... and searched ... and searched, physically and on the Web.
That one charger is the only one in town.
The only one in the county.
The only one in the state, as far as I could find. (I'd be thrilled to be proven wrong by readers.)
How disappointing. And I don't even own an EV. I did, however, find in the course of my research that our rainy sister city to the north, Seattle , has dozens -- DOZENS! -- of public charging stations, from city hall to the fancy new library. The downtown Pyramid Ale House will even drag an extension cord to your car for charging while dining, if you call ahead.
California, it almost goes without saying, is growing EV chargers like roadside poppies. Oregon 's bastions of alterna-green (I'm talking to you, Eugene) are far, far behind our neighbors on the EV charging front. But our one lone charger still puts Portland ahead of most cities in the country, allowing us to keep our "cutting edge" sense of ourselves, if not "bleeding edge."
Posted to RiverWired by Kristen Hall-Geisler
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