We have one full time graffiti clean-up crew in the Puget Sound area that can clean up top 5,000 square feet of graffiti per day. We rely on reports from drivers, the city of Seattle's graffiti patrol and past history to help prioritize where to send our crews.
In 2006 the Washington State Legislature provided money to temporarily add an additional graffiti patrol to help clean-up the I-5 corridor in the greater Seattle area from March 2006 to July 2007. This additional crew helped clean 78 percent more square feet of graffiti than the year before. We are carefully monitoring levels of graffiti in the Puget Sound area to see if this additional funding is needed in the future.
Graffiti cleanup challenges
Our goal is to clean up graffiti as quickly as possible. Our patrol works four days a week taking care of small problems before they become big problems. Typically our crew has a turnaround time of 48 hours between the time they receive a report and the graffiti is cleaned. However, the crew faces challenges in urban and suburban areas that sometimes slow their efforts.
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Rain: Our clean up crew uses paint to cover up graffiti. During inclement weather work is stalled because paint will not stick to a wet surface. We have used other methods in the past such as pressure washing, however paint has been the most efficient way to cover up graffiti in most areas. |
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Maintaining efficiency: Now with only one full time graffiti crew we aim to make the best use of their time and our resources. Graffiti cleanup sites are grouped together by location and then prioritized. Our crew cleans up all the graffiti in one area before moving on to the next spot. Some graffiti may stay up longer because we are concentrating our efforts on an area with more graffiti. |
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Difficult-to-clean surfaces: Graffiti cleanup on high structures require a bucket truck and lane closures. Graffiti in most tunnels requires special closures to wash graffiti off tunnel tiles. Cleanup is scheduled to coincide with regular maintenance or during off-peak hours to minimize delays for drivers. Highway signs also need to be washed; a process that takes much longer then painting over graffiti. These challenges prevent us from cleaning these areas on our regular daily rounds. |
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Statistics from March 1, 2006 through March 1, 2007:
With an extra graffiti crew we:
- covered 514,000 square feet (the equivalent of eleven and a half football fields) of graffiti, a 78 percent increase from the year prior (March 1, 2005 through March 1, 2006.
- spent nearly $108,000 dollars on graffiti cleanup, 150 percent more than the year prior.
- spent 5,428 hours cleaning graffiti, double the amount we spent the year prior with just one graffiti crew.