WKSU News: Speed limit set at 70 mph on some Ohio Interstates

Tuesday, May 21, 2013 Speed limit set at 70 mph on some Ohio Interstates Most of Ohio's neighboring states have already raised speed limits by WKSU's TIM RUDELL	Reporter Tim Rudell

Bright red lines show the new portions of Ohio's Interstate highways that will have a 70MPH speed limit effective July 1st. The green line is the Ohio Turnpike, which has had the high speed limit since 2011

Courtesy of ODOT

By July 1st the speed limit will be 70 miles per hour on “non-urbanized” stretches of Ohio’s super highway system. The state department of transportation released a map of where roads will be affected, WKSU’s Tim Rudell reports.

Click to listen

Other options:

MP3 Download (1:01)

The state legislature mandated the speed limit change to take effect this summer. In northeast Ohio, the boost from 65-to-70 miles per hour top speed will go into effect for: I-71 south of about the Cuyahoga-Medina County line; I-90 east of metro Cleveland to the PA border; I-76 from outside the east edge of Akron to the west edge of Youngstown; and I-77 from south of Canton all the way to Marietta.

Steve Falkner of the transportation department says the “non-urbanized” sections turned out to be a little different than expected. “We used census data and some points where we started and stopped the speed limit increases are not where we normally think of urban area limits.”

ODOT will be putting up more than 300 new signs showing the seed limit change and Faulkner says they’ll all be installed by July 1