I Can Only Guess What Happened When I Saw This Walking in Portland

As I was walking to work this morning I passed this mangled mess next to the sidewalk and tried to reconstruct what happened in my head.

This used to be a gate for a parking lot. An old one that looked like is was vintage 1982. Pull swipe your parking card and the gate goes up. What destroyed this and made it a massive pile of junk?

My guess is that all the snow we got last week made it hard to see for the plow truck and while it was clearing the parking lot, it rammed right into it a good speed.

Later in the day I walked by it again and saw to maintenance workers looking at it. One said "Well I'm kinda glad this happened. We needed a new one."