As the sun glinted off Interstate 84 early Sunday morning, and Gov. Tina Kotek pushed a paint roller into a bucket of light gray paint. Working in broad strokes, she covered a gray, black and white tag about the size of a door on the closed César E.
Chávez off-ramp. “This is a reset for this corridor,” Kotek said at hour eight of the she helped bring about, to clear graffiti and litter along a beleaguered five-mile stretch of I-84. I-84 reopened Sunday just after 11:30 a.
m. after six entities, including the Oregon Department of Transportation, Union Pacific, TriMet, Metro, the Portland Bureau of Transportation and Multnomah County, collaborated to halt auto and light rail traffic in the area to access unsightly tags that are otherwise very difficult to reach. Just a day before, tags in all fonts, colors and sizes defaced the concrete slabs supporting the Sandy Boulevard overpass.
Geometric black letters lined the length of the span. But as Kotek walked under the structure Sunday morning, unblemished gray walls surrounded her. One of the only traces of the graffiti of months past was a scraggly tag on the freeway border that one of the crews promptly spray painted away.
A sign for Sandy Boulevard on the overpass — once obscured by light shades of graffiti — stood bright green on the freshly painted concrete. More than 100 employees from the six groups joined private contractors to complete the cleanup, which also included electrical repairs, sign maintenance, pavem.