Southeast Harney Street between 62nd and 60th was the showcase for PBOT's "free" gravel service (Andrew Theen/Staff)
When friends visit Amy Charbonneau’s house in Southeast Portland for the first time, she makes sure they ignore the GPS.
The computer directs drivers to take Southeast 60th Avenue onto Harney Street. But that end of Harney – an unpaved road in the middle of the city -- is like a pock-marked lunar landscape.
“I just tell people don’t even bother,” she said. “It’s just terrible.”
That will soon change.
On Monday morning, Charbonneau’s Brentwood-Darlington neighborhood turned into a construction zone and a miniature city transportation news conference. Portland was taking charge, city officials said, and leveling out Harney Street and filling in its cavernous potholes.
"You have finally been heard," Portland Commissioner Chloe Eudaly said as equipment roared behind her, turning the unpaved road into a level street suitable for pedestrians, cars and bikes.
Portland Commissioenr Chloe Eudaly said the voices of Portlanders' who live on unpaved streets have finally been heard (Andrew Theen/Staff)
But the gaggle of transportation leaders assembled weren’t overseeing a paving program for the nearly 60 miles of dirt roads in Portland’s mid-city neighborhoods. Instead, they were there to watch crews level out a small section of an unpaved street, then add a new layer of gravel to make it smoother and passable.
Portland is trying to draw attention to its modest effort to level out and fill potholes on this stretch of Harney and throughout town. Work began quietly in November, but residents on affected streets have been notified.
All told, about 50 miles of unpaved streets will get level ground, no potholes and a promise to return in three years.
But about 10 miles of the city’s unpaved streets are not even suitable for such treatment. The city says that’s because they are in steep Southwest Portland, have trees in the middle of the road or are infrequently used or maintained by private businesses.
Officials took pains Monday to say they weren't maintaining streets like Charbonneau's. They pitched the gravel program as a "free service" to homeowners. After all, city policy states adjacent property owners are responsible for the unpaved streets. Only if the streets are paved and brought up to city engineering standards will the city formally accept responsibility and take over maintenance duties.
Southeast Harney Street between 62nd and 60th was the showcase for PBOT's "free" gravel service (Andrew Theen/Staff)
But paying to pave your own street is not practical for most Portland neighborhoods, let alone underserved areas where, because of the state’s tax system, neighbors may pay higher property taxes than gentrified inner Portland neighborhoods.
On dozens of streets like Charbonneau’s, however, neighbors have been doing what they can, in lieu of banding together to finance multi-million-dollar paving projects from private construction firms.
That means leaning on you neighbors. Most pay to fill potholes on their own dime and make the street navigable. Because neighbors maintain it on their own, Charbonneau said, it’s been fine in front of her home. “But down there,” she said nodding toward 60th, “Oh Lord, it’s bad.”
Residents got together a few years back to discuss if they could find a way to pave their section of Harney.
“We would all have to take out a loan, and it was far too expensive,” she said.
A few blocks from the PBOT news conference sits this section of SE 54th Avenue near Henderson Street (Andrew Theen/Staff)
She’s pleased Portland is taking steps to improve the road. It’s better than nothing.
“But wouldn’t you want to pave it, to improve everybody’s property values and improve the city?” she asked during an interview with The Oregonian/OregonLive. “I would think they would want to put the money into a final solution.”
Chris Warner, Bureau of Transportation interim director, said the leveling and graveling program would cost about $1 million to $1.5 million, with money coming from the city’s share of the record $5.3 billion statewide transportation package passed in 2017. The city will put its summer paving crews to work in the winter to use existing staff.
Warner, who worked on this same issue as chief of staff to then-Commissioner Steve Novick, said surveys of homeowners on gravel streets showed neighbors in east Portland in particular were frustrated. Before Portland annexed these east Multnomah County neighborhoods in the 1980s, those homeowners said the county would grade and gravel the streets. Warner said he "didn't know why" that didn't continue under city control.
“We don’t keep a maintenance record on these unpaved roads,” he said.
According to the city’s own records, a residential task force asked the city in 1988 to “offer more flexible less costly street standards.”
On Monday, a Brentwood Darlington board member called the gravel project "essential maintenance" in the long-neglected neighborhood.
Portland estimates it would cost $6.3 million per mile to pave gravel roads and add sidewalks.
There are 200 miles of streets with no curbs or sidewalks in Portland, like this one just east of Southeast 62nd Avenue and Harney in Portland (Andrew Theen/Staff)
That’s a cool $315 million to improve all of the roads being treated by the city’s gravel service.
There are 200 more miles of paved roads without curbs or sidewalks. Those streets are all around Charbonneau’s home, and in large swaths of Southwest and east Portland. Adding curbs and sidewalks to those streets would cost more than $1 billion.
Portland will start with leveling out streets south of Division on the east side, then move north of Division. The third year it will move to the westside.
Eudaly, who recently was assigned to oversee the Transportation Bureau, wondered -- who knew how exciting gravel could be?
“This neighborhood has made the best of the giant pond that was in the middle of it, but I think they’re ready to actually use this road as it was intended,” she said.
-- Andrew Theen
atheen@oregonian.com
503-294-4026
@andrewtheen
Visit subscription.oregonlive.com/newsletters to get Oregonian/OregonLive journalism delivered to your email inbox.
Ad Choices