Only 652.
Tuesday, September 15th, 2020
The past couple of years when we head south on I-75, having cleared the metro Toledo area, we encounter this sign. Hey, we’re only 652 miles from home!
Turns out there’s always an explanation, and I found it in The Toledo Blade.
Credit the geography lesson to Chris Waterfield, district traffic engineer at the Ohio Department of Transportation’s district office in Bowling Green, who decided to mix things up a bit — while complying with federal sign guidelines — when he designed new signs five years ago to be erected after I-75’s recent widening south of Perrysburg.
“This is my attempt at maybe trying to wake you up a little bit, and see something different. I don’t think you need to see the same thing every five miles. I want to make it interesting,” Mr. Waterfield said.
The three-line signs do not cost significantly more than the two-line standard ODOT signs used for mileage, he said.
I can kinda understand the “wake you up a little bit” part…the road from Toledo down to, say, Lima is indeed kinda straight and cornfield-lined and, dare I say, monotonous.
For some reason, having them stacked this way makes my brain try to do more math: okay, given these, how far from Cincinnati to Atlanta? (499 miles, no more, no less.)
And that 499 miles is, really, quite Ohio-free.
