Portland Metro Freeway/Highway/Roads News and Discussions

[subterranean]

It’s vandalism of both public and private property. Anyone who thinks it’s just fine should offer up their own houses as canvases. Every dollar spent on repair is a dollar not spent on some other public good.

Its lack of enforcement or adequate consequences have led to this. In terms of consequences, I was thinking the following:

Strike 1: $5,000 fine, 90 days in jail, then a year of community service, cleaning up graffiti and trash.

Strike 2: Seize all assets to pay for cleanup, 1 year in jail, 1 year community service as above.

Strike 3: Choice between 10 years in prison or removal of your dominant hand.

[urbanlife]

Originally Posted by subterranean

It’s vandalism of both public and private property. Anyone who thinks it’s just fine should offer up their own houses as canvases. Every dollar spent on repair is a dollar not spent on some other public good.

Its lack of enforcement or adequate consequences have led to this. In terms of consequences, I was thinking the following:

Strike 1: $5,000 fine, 90 days in jail, then a year of community service, cleaning up graffiti and trash.

Strike 2: Seize all assets to pay for cleanup, 1 year in jail, 1 year community service as above.

Strike 3: Choice between 10 years in prison or removal of your dominant hand.

Okay, calm down there, Saddam.

[downtownpdx]

Originally Posted by urbanlife

I never understood how spray paint could make anything look like "the ghetto," since it is literally found in any city regardless of the eco-status of the neighborhood. This is graffiti in one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in Manhattan and no one bats an eye to it or think they are in some sort of ghetto.

Yeah I guess it’s just context. If a visitor is driving down a freeway in Portland for the first time, of course they should expect to see a few tags. But when every possible space is covered, it looks, on first impression, like the city doesn’t care, or can’t afford to, and this forms their first impression. Whether it’s warranted or not a lot of people associate tagging with gangs and lack of safety.

I know not everyone cares about this and a lot of graffiti actually displays some artistic talent. But in the context of first impressions, I’d say the vast majority of reactions are negative.

If you’re already in the midst of a wealthy Manhattan hood and see some graffiti you’re not gonna suddenly feel unsafe. But as a welcome mat to visitors coming to Portland for the first time on the freeway or train, we oughta put on a better face— especially for a not-so-large city whose claim to fame has long been staying clean and green.

[downtownpdx]

Originally Posted by subterranean

It’s vandalism of both public and private property. Anyone who thinks it’s just fine should offer up their own houses as canvases. Every dollar spent on repair is a dollar not spent on some other public good.

Its lack of enforcement or adequate consequences have led to this. In terms of consequences, I was thinking the following:

Strike 1: $5,000 fine, 90 days in jail, then a year of community service, cleaning up graffiti and trash.

Strike 2: Seize all assets to pay for cleanup, 1 year in jail, 1 year community service as above.

Strike 3: Choice between 10 years in prison or removal of your dominant hand.

Excellent
Haha! I dunno about removing appendages buy I’m all for steep fines and forced community service cleaning up the city.

Since Portland’s reputation post Covid has been as city in chaos, even though things have vastly improved, we can’t afford to throw our hands up at things like rampant graffiti because people “should” be okay with it. No business or home owner is like “oh finally those graffiti artists beautified my place with their spray paint.” And most of us don’t feel any different about our public spaces.

[urbanlife]

Originally Posted by downtownpdx

Yeah I guess it’s just context. If a visitor is driving down a freeway in Portland for the first time, of course they should expect to see a few tags. But when every possible space is covered, it looks, on first impression, like the city doesn’t care, or can’t afford to, and this forms their first impression. Whether it’s warranted or not a lot of people associate tagging with gangs and lack of safety.

I know not everyone cares about this and a lot of graffiti actually displays some artistic talent. But in the context of first impressions, I’d say the vast majority of reactions are negative.

If you’re already in the midst of a wealthy Manhattan hood and see some graffiti you’re not gonna suddenly feel unsafe. But as a welcome mat to visitors coming to Portland for the first time on the freeway or train, we oughta put on a better face— especially for a not-so-large city whose claim to fame has long been staying clean and green.

I have travelled a lot and have seen a lot of graffiti in every city I have visited, I feel like the people who would have a negative impression are gonna be the ones that haven't really travelled much and are visiting their nearby large city.

Heck, when it comes to rails, when was the last time you saw freight trains without graffiti? It's just something that exists anywhere you go.

[downtownpdx]

Originally Posted by urbanlife

I have travelled a lot and have seen a lot of graffiti in every city I have visited, I feel like the people who would have a negative impression are gonna be the ones that haven't really travelled much and are visiting their nearby large city.

Heck, when it comes to rails, when was the last time you saw freight trains without graffiti? It's just something that exists anywhere you go.

And every city has graffiti abatement. I’m not saying we should or ever will totally eliminate it, but do you agree there should be an attempt ? We’re not gonna get rid of Clean and Safe because trash is part of big city life and the less traveled oughta know better. I’m just not sure what you’re trying to propose.

Regarding trains i meant the surrounding landscape, the graffiti, trash and camps that have lined the max corridor along I-84. I know the state is trying to get Union Pacific to take care of this or at least let the city clean up. The freight trains are covered of course, but I don’t think Amtrak or Trimet would want that look on their passenger cars.

[MarkDaMan]

Local media, especially the silly Willy Week, have been doing some coverage of the work the city/police are doing to catch graffiti taggers.

After a few of these taggers get thrown in jail for a few months, or better yet, forced to paint over graffiti for a reasonable number of community service hours, we should see a reduction. That said, I've seen graffiti my entire life in pretty much any city I've visited. Doesn't mean we shouldn't go after prolific taggers, but I don't know there will ever be a solution to stopping graffiti. The difference is, when my elementary school in Aloha got tagged when I was a kid, they'd have it painted over by the time we had our first recess.

https://www.oregonlive.com/crime/202...olice-say.html

https://www.wweek.com/news/2024/02/2...-their-styles/

https://www.wweek.com/news/courts/20...on-23-charges/

[downtownpdx]

This should also help.

I realize every city has graffiti and it'll never go away, and a certain amount here and there is no big deal. But ODOT has been hands off for almost a year now, apparently because they can't afford cleanup, and it shows. I-84 in particular is not a real pretty drive into the city, and when practically every inch of retaining walls, overpasses, signs etc are covered in spray paint it just confirms any casual passerby's impressions from the media, that Portland is a city in chaos.

As locals we can sit back all we want and scoff at people who judge the city on a quick pass through, but it doesn't change people's reluctance to open a business here, their decision to move instead to Beaverton, or simply tell their friends how dirty and unkempt Portland looked...

Portland pushes property owners for speedier graffiti cleanup
https://www.oregonlive.com/crime/202...i-cleanup.html

Updated: Mar. 01, 2024

By Austin De Dios | The Oregonian/OregonLive

Portland officials will now have an easier time slapping fines on people who don’t clean up graffiti on their property.

An ordinance the Portland City Council unanimously approved this month lets city officials skip the lengthy process they used to follow to prod property owners to paint over unsightly tags. Under the new rule — another effort in the city’s uphill battle with graffiti — officials can go straight to the city’s Code Hearings Office to open a case and seek penalties for property owners who don’t comply with the city’s 10-day deadline.


Commissioner Carmen Rubio, who brought the measure forward on Feb. 14, called it a “common sense, effective step that we are able to do immediately.”

Matt Olguin, the city’s graffiti abatement program manager, told city commissioners that the goal is to encourage more people to clean up tags on their buildings without costing the city a lot more money.

“Property owners are less likely to ignore the Code Hearings Office,” he said.

The new rule is reserved for the city’s biggest offenders who leave large portions of graffiti up and ignore the graffiti program’s requests for them to clean it. Property owners have 10 days to remove tags on their buildings once they’ve received notice from the city’s program — a rule that’s been in effect since 1998, according to Jimmy Radosta, a spokesperson for Rubio.

[uncommon.name]

Originally Posted by urbanlife

I have travelled a lot and have seen a lot of graffiti in every city I have visited, I feel like the people who would have a negative impression are gonna be the ones that haven't really travelled much and are visiting their nearby large city.

Heck, when it comes to rails, when was the last time you saw freight trains without graffiti? It's just something that exists anywhere you go.

You're right about one point, every city does have graffiti. However, most of those cities are able to make an effort to clean it up and it shows by it being more sporadic. In Portland right now, you can drive up I5 north of Downtown and it's a solid wall of graffiti for several miles. I do and have travelled recently. I was just in Sacramento last month, driving all over the city. It's a city who's rough reputation preceeds it. It was cleaner than Portland with less frequent graffiti and less/smaller homeless camps. They were there, just not to the extent as Portland. Now San Francisco on the other hand, it is struggling much like Portland is so it is certainly not just exclusive to Portland.

I wholeheartedly disagree about your statements that it doesn't look "ghetto", or the word I would use, trashy. There are certainly higher concentrations of graffiti in rougher areas of town.

[downtownpdx]

Pilot program from Dept of Transportation -- wonder if Oregon also got $ for this? Will be interesting to see how effective this is, it could be a really efficient, cost effective and quick way to keep up on graffiti.

Drones may soon help WA clean up graffiti along state highways
March 25, 2024 at 9:18 am

By Laurel Demkovich
Washington State Standard

Is it a bird, a plane? No, it’s a drone spraying paint over graffiti along Washington’s state roads.

Washington may soon employ aerial drone technology to deal with a growing graffiti problem on highway infrastructure. Lawmakers this session passed a bill and set aside $1 million for a Department of Transportation pilot program focused on finding new ways to erase spray paint from road signs, walls and bridges.

https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle...tate-highways/

[uncommon.name]

Originally Posted by downtownpdx

Pilot program from Dept of Transportation -- wonder if Oregon also got $ for this? Will be interesting to see how effective this is, it could be a really efficient, cost effective and quick way to keep up on graffiti.

Drones may soon help WA clean up graffiti along state highways
March 25, 2024 at 9:18 am

By Laurel Demkovich
Washington State Standard



https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle...tate-highways/

As a Part 107 drone operator, I'm curious how they are going to work with the FAA to approve flying drones over moving vehicles.

[MIPS]

Hello. Wandering Canadian here. Take my two cents here as a tourist and not as a resident.

I cannot say that it's impossible to get rid of the graffiti (and I am speaking from a town seeing the seasonal spike of transients coming up from the coast as the snow melts and we are overwhelmed by nightly tagging parties) but the last five times I've driven through Portland, the sheer insanity of the tagging on the interstate alone made me avoid Portland entirely. I went for gas either before or after I got trough town because there was no way in hell I was trusting my car or my packed belongings unattended wherever the hell there was this much tagging and this was the highway. I can only imagine once you are away from the big noisy road with constantly moving traffic (you know, that thing you would expect to deter taggers) and into more discrete and quieter areas it's worse. Seattle over the winter has done quite a job installing new wire fencing (harder to cut through than chain link) and the regions of the I5 under the convention center and SoDo no longer look like slums.

[downtownpdx]

Interesting viewpoint -- I hear you about the rampant graffiti. Our state highway dept basically ignored the problem over the last year but the legislature is giving them $20 million to clean up graffiti, (every 2 weeks is the plan), garbage and camps, as well as installing barriers to camping etc., starting now.

It's actually very much the opposite regarding leaving the freeway into quieter areas. I pulled off recently from I-84 (where the tagging is at least as bad as I-5), at the 42nd Ave exit, right in the thick of it. It is seriously a sigh of relief to pull off and realize that despite the crazy appearance on the freeway the immediate neighborhoods are actually quite pleasant. Outer east Portland isn't so great, past 82nd Ave., but most freeway-adjacent Portland hoods are very well-kept and livable -- but like you say, you'd never know it from a drive through town recently.

There will hopefully be lots of visible progress in the coming months. The highway dept is dealing with dwindling gas tax revenue from high-mileage and electric cars, so they need to figure out a stable funding source for this maintenance.

[downtownpdx]

Originally Posted by uncommon.name

As a Part 107 drone operator, I'm curious how they are going to work with the FAA to approve flying drones over moving vehicles.

https://www.faa.gov/uas/commercial_o...rt_107_waivers

Part 107 Waiver
The Operations Over People rule became effective on April 21, 2021. Drone pilots operating under Part 107 may fly at night, over people and moving vehicles without a waiver as long as they meet the requirements defined in the rule. Airspace authorizations are still required for night operations in controlled airspace under 400 feet.

[uncommon.name]

Originally Posted by downtownpdx

https://www.faa.gov/uas/commercial_o...rt_107_waivers

I'm aware of those. My curiousity I suppose revolves more around flying over vehicles with a larger drone. Most of those waivers apply to small UAS, which is a unmanned aircraft up to 50lbs. It seems like a drone spraying enough paint to cover these larger areas of graffiti would be fairly heavy. Just a curiousity. My drone is nowhere near that weight and I've used waivers many times.

[urbanlife]

Originally Posted by uncommon.name

You're right about one point, every city does have graffiti. However, most of those cities are able to make an effort to clean it up and it shows by it being more sporadic. In Portland right now, you can drive up I5 north of Downtown and it's a solid wall of graffiti for several miles. I do and have travelled recently. I was just in Sacramento last month, driving all over the city. It's a city who's rough reputation preceeds it. It was cleaner than Portland with less frequent graffiti and less/smaller homeless camps. They were there, just not to the extent as Portland. Now San Francisco on the other hand, it is struggling much like Portland is so it is certainly not just exclusive to Portland.

I wholeheartedly disagree about your statements that it doesn't look "ghetto", or the word I would use, trashy. There are certainly higher concentrations of graffiti in rougher areas of town.

I'm all for cities fining property owners for not cleaning up the graffiti, but in the grand scheme of things, its a low priority issue.

[downtownpdx]

Originally Posted by urbanlife

I'm all for cities fining property owners for not cleaning up the graffiti, but in the grand scheme of things, its a low priority issue.

In an ideal world places like I-5 would get cleaned up often enough that it never gets to the point it’s at now. There has to be a reasonably affordable way to simply paint over tags frequently enough to discourage the taggers in the first place, and maybe drones is one way to go.

Just look at the post from the visitor., If someone is actually too worried to exit the freeway for some gas… of course we can assure them in a website like this that it’s an overreaction, and that Portland is really ok and isn’t reflected in the blight all over the freeway, etc etc. But the other 99.99999% of drivers are just gonna draw their own conclusions, and they won’t be good. None of us benefits from that kind of attention.

[MIPS]

It is a pretty broad reach to paint a whole city (no pun intended) that it isn't going to get better the further you go into the downtown core but for Portland at least I can recall the cheery views from nearly 15 years ago that Portland was the place to go with "The dream of the 90's lives in Portland" and invitations of it being a place to go if you wanted to stay weird, do what you wanted and say what you wanted to but I think what I'm trying to get to is that when things start to look more like a New York subway in the 70's the vision while likely not ever entirely true is that there might be a bit too much anarchy at play to feel comfortable. Weekly paint-overs and requiring ID to buy spraypaint only goes so far. I remember when Super Soaker paint tagging became all the rage in Vancouver. (BC)

That and it's usually cheaper to get gas outside of town, however that's true of almost anywhere.

[mhays]

Originally Posted by subterranean

It’s vandalism of both public and private property. Anyone who thinks it’s just fine should offer up their own houses as canvases. Every dollar spent on repair is a dollar not spent on some other public good.

Its lack of enforcement or adequate consequences have led to this. In terms of consequences, I was thinking the following:

Strike 1: $5,000 fine, 90 days in jail, then a year of community service, cleaning up graffiti and trash.

Strike 2: Seize all assets to pay for cleanup, 1 year in jail, 1 year community service as above.

Strike 3: Choice between 10 years in prison or removal of your dominant hand.

I'd omit Strike 3 and cut 1 and 2 somewhat, but you're on the right track.

We can't just give up and let the scum dominate.

We have a problem in Seattle too though it seems less than Portland. I've lived in urban neighborhoods most of my life and will never accept or get used to this aspect. It doesn't have to be anything like the Covid-era level.

[RED_PDXer]

I recently drove down I-5 from Olympia into Portland and it's very jarring to see the graffiti on Portland highways. It's the first thing you notice after the "Welcome to Oregon" sign which is safely close enough to Vancouver to not be tagged. With all the highway signs that are now tagged too, the whole situation screams of chaos. It's no surprise to me that someone wouldn't want to get off the highway in Portland.