Portland’s largest ever street mural is on NE 131st Avenue

(Photo: City of Portland)

A street painting in east Portland has earned bragging rights as the largest in the city. In September, people who live in the Argay neighborhood partnered with the Portland Bureau of Transportation on a mural that spans 835 feet on Northeast 131st between NE Shaver and Prescott. The mural is 44 feet wide and a total of 36,000 square feet of painted pavement.

PBOT has granted permits for street paintings for many years and while research shows they have positive safety impacts, PBOT says much of that safety comes from the relationships people make with others in their community while coming together to make the projects happen.

The new mural on NE 131st emerged as a priority after the City planned to address speeding and other safety concerns on the street. In a survey of several dozen residents on the street 75% of them said the street is unsafe and 80% of respondents blamed speeding and aggressive driving as the main culprit. Gun violence has also plagued the area — much of it from people using cars to launch their attacks.

The concept for the mural design was created by local youth from Parkrose High School. The nonprofit Pathfinder Network helped connect PBOT to students impacted by gun violence and the City provided $10,000 for a nine-week training where the students helped design and build a traffic safety project. PBOT staff won a $25,000 Bloomberg Asphalt Art Initiative grant and worked with 200 volunteers to set the mural into motion. The design includes a river and natural landscape scene with clouds and butterflies. In addition to the painting, PBOT has installed a traffic circle and speed bumps.

“It’s pretty awesome to be part of something this big with a powerful meaning behind it,” said Mariah, one of the Parkrose HS students who worked on the project. “I’ve never done something this big before, let alone in a public space.”

In a recent email newsletter about their public plaza program, PBOT wrote, “The NE 131st Place mural not only adds beauty but reinforces the power of collaboration, local engagement, and youth leadership in addressing critical neighborhood concerns.”

Check PBOT’s website for more info on the project.

Jonathan Maus (Publisher/Editor)

Jonathan Maus (Publisher/Editor)

Founder of BikePortland (in 2005). Father of three. North Portlander. Basketball lover. Car driver. If you have questions or feedback about this site or my work, contact me via email at maus.jonathan@gmail.com, or phone/text at 503-706-8804. Also, if you read and appreciate this site, please become a paying subscriber.

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WalksInPortland
WalksInPortland
20 days ago

This is a fantastic project for all the reasons PBOT mentioned! While trekking and traveling through Portugal, we haven’t come across many street paintings. But every village and city we’ve visited has its own public square—and plenty of roundabouts!

Fred
Fred
20 days ago

Love the mural, but is the paint slippery when wet?

Intern
Intern
20 days ago

Just a note: this is actually the Argay neighborhood, although Parkrose SD serves multiple neighborhoods

david hampsten
david hampsten
19 days ago
Reply to  Intern

It wasn’t all that long ago that writers in inner Portland would refer to everything in Portland east of I-205 as “Lents”, but now there’s also a “Parkrose”. Maybe one day they’ll discover “the People’s Republic of Argay”, Wilkes, and Glenfair in the outer northeast? Or the hidden lands of Woodland Park, PHAN, Russell, Mill Park? Or the vast ill-defined eastern potentates of Hazelwood, Centennial, Powellhurst-Gilbert, and Pleasant Valley?

Lisa Caballero (Contributor)
Editor
Reply to  david hampsten

Complain, complain, complain. Everything outside the flat part of downtown is known as “the west hills.” One thing that is exciting about the new government structure is that there will geographic representation. That is already changing the political dynamic of this town.

david hampsten
david hampsten
19 days ago

Ah yes, the elitist snobs in District 4, we all know what they are like…

Intern
Intern
19 days ago
Reply to  david hampsten

I mostly just want those Argay folks to get the credit. The boundaries are pretty arbitrary since us Parkrose folks work closely with many Argay folks, but it takes a lot of work to get a street painting done, especially one of this size.

Jeff S
Jeff S
19 days ago

Remember ~30 years ago, when the first modest neighbor-inspired intersection “repair” painting went in at SE Sherrett & 9th, and the amount of consternation it caused the City? Times have changed, as they are wont to do…

idlebytes
idlebytes
19 days ago

This is a great addition to the neighborhood and an interesting contrast to the freight supplier building being built in the old K-Mart space just down the road.

The mural is already on google street view if you want to check out the whole thing.

qqq
qqq
19 days ago
Reply to  idlebytes

Sadly, the first thing I thought of when I saw where this commendable project is was how close it was to that trucking monstrosity (which I think the City could have denied).

This article also ties in well with the new article about the City Auditor’s review of PBOT. The Auditor mentioned that a problem with PBOT’s effectiveness has been lack of enforcement by police–that is, the performance of another bureau.

In this case, PBOT worked hard to create something positive for safety and livability in this neighborhood, while another bureau (BDS) allowed a project nearby that will devastate safety and livability.

Champs
Champs
19 days ago

Well, you know what they say, and for once I’m going to say it too: paint is not protection.

Pun absolutely not intended, we desperately need PBOT to take more concrete action to prevent direct AND indirect vehicular violence. The bureau knows that its street network facilitates commerce, both licit and illicit, yet it refuses to turn those dials when it comes to the latter. I will never understand the hypothetical of emergency vehicle access on residential streets when there are actual human beings dying right now because of the actions that they refuse to take.

Watts
Watts
19 days ago
Reply to  Champs

I think the whole paint is not protection bit is tiring and counterproductive because it makes cyclists sound needy and irrational. The rest of the transportation world manages with paint alone outside of the most extreme situations.

Here’s what it would take to convince me I’m wrong: some clear evidence that cyclists are getting seriously injured or killed in places where realistic concrete barriers would have made a difference.

There are probably a few examples where this is true, but if it’s not a significant factor in a reasonable proportion of cases, then what we’re asking for is expensive treatments with little practical value.

What would it take to convince you that, in most cases at least, good paint treatments are good enough?

John V
John V
18 days ago
Reply to  Watts

The rest of the transportation world manages with paint alone outside of the most extreme situations.

This is a lazy argument. We can “manage” without anything. We can “manage” without cars, irrigation, vaccines, whatever. Not to mention, people in cars are not vulnerable to serious injury in low speed collisions, whereas bicycles are. At high speeds, vehicles do in fact need more than paint and usually get it (see: interstate highways). And even at low speeds, concrete protection is built because of cars – street curbs.

You’re also making the fallacy that paint works because of the riders that are using it now. The whole idea is it needs to be safe for the riders that are not currently riding. It’d be nice to have safe routes for teens and families with small children.

Where I do agree is the knee-jerk reaction of “paint is not protection” being simply wrong. It’s wrong because it actually is protection. It does something. The problem is that it isn’t good enough. In the same way that a center yellow line is protection from cars doing head on collisions, but it isn’t considered good enough for freeways and many other places.

Watts
Watts
18 days ago
Reply to  John V

“You’re also making the fallacy that paint works because of the riders that are using it now. ”

This isn’t my argument at all. I’m saying we rely primarily on paint and there aren’t enough cases where it fails to support claims we need dramatically more expensive and intrusive solutions to protect us.

I’ve told you what evidence would convince me I’m wrong. What would convince you I’m right?

John V
John V
18 days ago
Reply to  Watts

some clear evidence that cyclists are getting seriously injured or killed in places where realistic concrete barriers would have made a difference.

This isn’t going to happen if the cyclists aren’t riding there because of the lack of concrete barriers.

It’s like if you had an obviously Indiana Jones style booby trapped path with poison darts and swinging blades, and nobody walks there because of the obvious traps. And you say “what would convince me it’s unsafe is people getting killed there”. People aren’t getting killed there because they’re not going to places that are obviously unsafe.

I don’t have the studies off hand (I think people have shared them on here many times), but there is evidence that people don’t ride because they don’t feel it is safe.

With lots of practice / experience and constant vigilance, our existing infrastructure can be quite safe, objectively. But that’s a barrier to entry that a lot of people won’t get past.

Watts
Watts
18 days ago
Reply to  John V

“This isn’t going to happen if the cyclists aren’t riding there because of the lack of concrete barriers.”

But it would if there were an actual danger to protect against.

People ride on our streets all the time. If you have a specific danger spot in mind, we can talk about that, but here I’m discussing the general argument that physical separation is needed everywhere. It’s clearly not.

I am NOT saying concrete is never needed anywhere. I am saying for general urban riding around Portland, paint provides sufficient protection.

How many millions can you justify spending to make a small group of people feel more psychologically secure in the hope they will start riding their bikes? It’s not like we have infinite money, and the feds aren’t going to help us pay for this the way they would a highway or transit project. If I had the money, I could think of a dozen ways to use it that would have a much greater impact.

You still haven’t told me what it would take to convince you we didn’t need concrete barriers everywhere to make bike riding viable in Portland.

John V
John V
18 days ago
Reply to  Watts

Oh, I’m already convinced I don’t need concrete everywhere to make riding safe enough (although I’d go out of my way to use it if it was there, so that’s evidence enough that it matters). In general we don’t need it everywhere. And “need” is a wishy washy word anyway because we don’t need very much of anything, generally.

But when you say

to make a small group of people feel more psychologically secure

I don’t think it is a small group of people. Since most people don’t ride a bike, it’s actually a very large pool of people we can appeal to with safety improvements.
Also you say “psychologically secure” as if that isn’t an important factor. It’s all psychology, all the way down. The thing people don’t like is dangers like this where it is entirely out of your control. You have no control over someone glancing at their phone and veering into your bike lane from behind, and that kind of lack of control drives behavior.

We don’t have infinite money for bicycles, but it sure seems like we have infinite money for car infrastructure. You talk about concrete barriers like it’s some insurmountable investment, yet our roads are literally already completely made out of hard infrastructure. It’s just a matter of incrementally getting there and we should be.

Watts
Watts
18 days ago
Reply to  John V

Ok, great — it sounds as if you agree that paint is protection, even if it doesn’t provide the psychological sense of security some potential riders might say they want.

footwalker
17 days ago

There’s opportunities for a Trees in the Curb Zone to chicane the road further along this segment. You can see the roots are constrained and lifting the sidewalk here (Google Street View link). Same situation here further down the block and on the opposite side of the street.

https://www.portland.gov/transportation/planning/trees-curb-zone

https://nacto.org/publication/urban-street-design-guide/street-design-elements/curb-extensions/chicane/