February 14, 2002
That long drive to El Paso just got a little bit shorter. No, the number of miles hasn’t changed, and the seemingly endless construction shows no signs of slowing down.
The Texas Department of Transportation will just allow you to drive it a little faster. The speed limit on Interstate 10 through Hudspeth, Culberson, and Jeff Davis had just ticked up a notch from 70 to 75 miles per hour, according to TxDOT officials in El Paso. The nighttime speed limit remains at 65 miles per hour, officials said.
The change is thanks to a law written by State Representative Pete Gallego and passed by the Texas Legislature last year allowing speed limits to be increased in all Texas counties with a population density of less than 10 persons per square mile.
Interstate 20 has also sped up, with daytime limits increased to 75 miles per hour along a section stretching from the-I-10 intersection to the Pecos River. Next up for changes are long lonely stretches of U.S. 90 and U.S. 67 throughout West Texas.
Representatives of TxDOT’s El Paso and Odessa districts say they are working together on proposals to raise speed limits on U.S. 90 from Van Horn east all the way past Marathon and on U.S. 67 from Alpine to Fort Stockton. If approved by TxDOT commissioners in Austin, these changes would go into effect in April of this year.
Later this year, TxDOT will study U.S. 67 from Marfa to Presidio and from Fort Stockton north to the Tom Green County line for possible speed limit increases. Switching the speed limits on two-lane roads is a bit trickier than the interstates, according to Mike MeAnally, Director of Operations for TxDOT ’s Odessa District. “With interstates it was easy: you just put the signs up,” he said. “When you get to the two-lane roads, you’ve got striping and passing zones to take care of.”