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As Portlanders, supporting and participating in the Rose Festival is honor and joy for PBOT staff across the bureau. It is a privilege and joy to roll out the red carpet for this event and welcome the thousands of visitors to our city and downtown for this celebration of the Rose City.
Published
(May 28, 2026) The Portland Bureau of Transportation's (PBOT) love of Portland goes deeper than the streets we dig up and rebuild. For decades, staff across the agency have taken great pride in supporting and celebrating Portland's official civic celebration of our city, the Portland Rose Festival. As the festivities begin, we're sharing a behind-the-scenes look at how the bureau supports these cherished events.
Months before you see the Ferris wheel for City Fair in Tom McCall Waterfront Park or the Fleet Week ships docked along the Harbor Wall, PBOT's Special Events Coordinator begins meeting with Rose Festival staff to make plans for the parades. Working collaboratively across many agencies and bureaus, PBOT helps plan for every aspect of the Rose Festival's parades and fun run.
Working with the Temporary Street Use Permitting Team, the Events Coordinator coordinates parking removal ahead of the parades, arranges for cones and barricades to assist with road closures, coordinates with Multnomah County on ramp closures for impacted bridges, assists TriMet and Portland Streetcar with planning and identifying impacts, and works with Geographic Information Systems (GIS) staff to support routing and mapping closures for internal and external audiences. This year, the parades are all making some unique and special changes with the Junior Parade moving to Saturday, May 30 and the newly combined Grand Floral Starlight Parade happening the following Saturday, June 6.
As we get closer to the start of Rose Festival, PBOT's maintenance teams are busy preparing a warm welcome for festival goers and visitors to the city. PBOT's structure crews are responsible for cleaning and maintaining the seawall in Waterfront Park. They work in coordination with the Portland Fire Bureau's Harbor Master and set out whalers (ship bumpers) for the arrival of the Fleet Week ships. They also build and place the metal stairs and handrails to safely connect from shore to ship and from ship to ship for the Navy boats that arrive for Fleet Week that allow for sailors and visitors to embark and disembark from the ships.
About two weeks prior to Rose Festival, you'll find PBOT's pothole crews filling potholes along the parade route and our graffiti abatement team cleaning up PBOT assets on the route and in the surrounding area. Our striping crew will also make sure we have fresh stripes downtown so all modes of travel have clear markings for safe travel by car, transit, foot and bike. About one week prior to each parade, striping crews will also paint the pink parade honor line along the parade route that guides the marching bands, floats, and other parade participants and keeps them on track.
A few days before the Grand Floral Starlight Parade, our street sweeping crew will run the parade route and give it a freshening up. After the parade, SOLVE volunteers will collect garbage and then, after hours, PBOT street cleaning will do a final cleaning.
During the Grand Floral Starlight Parade and Starlight Run, only officially approved motor vehicles will be given access to the route. People biking will be asked to detour around the parade route.
As Portlanders, supporting and participating in the Rose Festival is honor and joy for PBOT staff across the bureau. It is a privilege and joy to roll out the red carpet for this event and welcome the thousands of visitors to our city and downtown for this celebration of the Rose City.
This is just the beginning of the parade and festival season. We can't wait to see you at Good in the Hood on June 27-28 and at Portland Pride on July 18-19, to name a couple more joyous summertime city celebrations! See you there, Portland!