I Finally Found Some South Portland Street Blades. I Was Unimpressed.

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More than two years ago the City o'Portland made the bold decision to fix a problem that they didn't really have by creating a new city directional slice, South, to the five-quadranted layout of Portland's streets. Insisting that it was causing innumerable problems in technological wayfinding for first responders and others who needed to find their way into and out of the area making deliveries and such, that part of SW that was east of the line created by SW Naito Parkway and SW View Point Terrace yet still west of the Willamette River would now carry the directional S rather than SW and the leading zeros on cross streets in that are would go away.

This, we were told, was a big problemo. 

So, in May 2019 we were told it was to change in May 2020. And now, it's May, 2021. We've cruised the South Waterfront and Riverplace areas assuming, and reasonably so, I think, that since there were so very many people lived in these areas that there would be some sort of movement toward street blade replacement or updating with a level somewhere approaching alacrity. 

After all, it was a very serious thing, yes?

Well, maybe. But after occasional passes through the area in the year (now, year-plus) since the switch from SW to S it seems as though exactly zero street blades in the South Waterfront and Riverplace areas were changed (fellow address nerd Michael Long, on Facebook, has turned up a precious few, but these are out toward Dunthorpe). Until today. Here's what we found at the intersection of Montgomery Street and Harbor Place, at the entry to the Riverplace area:

The single letter S, on a square of green, stuck on the sign. Still no block number on the sign. Looks kind of cheap-out, to my eye. But wait ... there's more. 

The big boulevard that comes through area is called Harbor Drive. Harbor Way sticks close by the side of it and derives its name from it. Finding this road on a map will show that its main purpose it to connect northbound traffic not wanting to hope the river and continue north to I-5 or I-84 to Portland City Center. Harbor Drive at one time was an expressway leading all the way up the Portland waterfront to the Steel Bridge. In 1974, that freeway went away to make way for Tom McCall Waterfont Park; the truncated expressway ended where SW Front Avenue (now Naito Parkway) intersected the Clay/Market couplet. 

So, Harbor Drive still exists in the area and provides a primary access. And there are street blades for it that read SW HARBOR DR. Except they now have been revised, as the new-look blades have:

Unless I'm very much mistaken, the bits of the old SW are just visible around the edges of the sticker that has the S on it. And similarly, the Montgomery St blade is updated thus.

At least they covered up the old directional in full here. It still looks sloppy, however.

I suppose at this point that's my biggest complaint. I'm still not happy with the fact that they felt they had to do this at all; leading-zero addresses were a great and uniquely Portland geography quirk, and I was sad to see it go. I've made my peace with it, now, though.

But since they went ahead and it's done, and we have to like it or lump it, and since it was such a big problem, why isn't the change coming any faster? Especially since all that it takes is to inartfully slap a sticker on? 

You can do better than this, City o'Portland.