As the sun glinted off Interstate 84 early Sunday morning, no travelers were in sight 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 overnight interstate closure 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, pavement patching and drain cleaning. As of 11 a.m. Sunday, workers had obliterated more than 200 tags, said ODOT regional manager Ted Miller.

The effort started at 11 p.m. Saturday as crews began closing off I-84 as well as surrounding ramps and a portion of Interstate 5. By midnight, Emery Loya and two other members of Portland Graffiti Removal — an ODOT-contracted company — had gathered underneath the intersection of I-84 and Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard.

Loya described the massive painting effort in front of him that night as “a little bit overwhelming,” but maintained a positive attitude about what crews could get done in 12 hours.

“I have faith in all these guys,” Loya, who has worked in graffiti removal for around five years, said.

Just over three hours later, Loya parked on an eerily tranquil I-84 and climbed into a lift attached to the back of the truck. He expertly maneuvered the lift and elevated himself several feet in the air until he came face to face with the graffiti-filled underside of the Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard overpass.

He quickly snapped a picture of a tag on the structure, then pointed a paint sprayer at it, covering the graffiti with fresh paint. Behind him, an ODOT employee scrubbed a speed limit sign, slowly erasing black Xs until the sign became bright yellow again.

After a few maneuvers up and down on the lift to hit different areas of the overpass, Loya finished sprucing up the structure and moved on to the next tag.

Loya and a few other Portland Graffiti Removal staff started the cleanup near the Marquam Bridge, working their way east with vans and boom lifts to cover up precariously placed graffiti using paint sprayers.

A second crew worked from Interstate 205 and moved west in the same fashion, said Robert Barrie, owner of Portland Graffiti Removal.

The company hauled in around 500 gallons of paint for the night, which is half of what it typically uses in a whole month, Barrie said.

By around 7 a.m., the eastbound group finished all the bridges up to César E. Chávez Boulevard, and the westbound crew had finished their entire stretch of I-84, Barrie said.

One of the reasons graffiti has remained on Portland’s highways and bridges for so long is it’s often on areas that are difficult to reach, said PBOT spokesperson Dylan Rivera. Crews must navigate freight-train tracks, MAX light-rail lines and overhead wires to reach graffiti sprayed underneath bridges or on highway signs.

“If it were easier to reach, we would have cleaned it up by now,” Rivera said.

To tackle the problem, Kotek announced in December she would seek $20 million to clean up Portland highways. Lawmakers approved the spending in March, accelerating efforts to combat taggers and trash.

Since mid-April, ODOT has cleaned more than 28,000 tags in Portland, Miller said. That’s not including the ones crews nabbed Saturday night.

As transportation officials wrapped up the cleanup effort Sunday morning, they were still tallying the cost to taxpayers.

The very real threat that taggers will simply return raises questions about whether the effort was worth it.

From Loya’s perspective, tagging has gone down in recent months as graffiti removal crews have taken a more dogged approach to covering the marks.

“They know we’ll come back,” he said.

At a Sunday morning press conference near the cleanup, Kotek stood in front of the graffiti she had painted over moments before and reminded the public why beautifying the city is so important.

I-84 connects Portland International Airport to the city center, giving visitors a first impression of Portland’s character and appearance, she said.

“How this looks and feels is really important to how people feel about their community,” Kotek said.

— Sujena Soumyanath is a reporter on The Oregonian/OregonLive’s public safety team. You can reach her at 503-221-4309 or ssoumyanath@oregonian.com.