Western Reserve Rd. WB at I-680 Exit 14 courtesy John Krakoff. I'll grant that I-680 SB doesn't go anywhere other than I-76 EB, but I would still say JCT I-680 TO EAST I-76 for clarity. It would be nice if this road or I-680 told traffic how to get to I-76 West too.

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Southbound


Starting off courtesy John Krakoff. There's no button copy up this way anymore.


A run of button copy and ugly detour shields on up the Exit 14 ramp. Exit 1 is the closest to the parent route of I-80, which is why numbers progress southward. I'll call the shield on the Exit 14 sign and the second one on the ramp "Variety 2" - "Variety 1" being the type of the first one on the ramp. In Variety 2, the western edge of Ohio is at the right height but the rest of the state still droops badly. Or maybe Michigan annexed Toledo and only this one contractor knows it.

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Northbound

All photos are courtesy Doug Kerr unless I say otherwise.


That sign used to say Exits 7-6B, OH 7, South Ave./Hubbard. As you'll soon see, the exits aren't that close together, so it makes some sense to split them apart in signage. That and US 62 is also around, so an OH 7 shield alone won't cut it. Last two photos courtesy John Krakoff.


All courtesy John Krakoff. As you can see, some signs in the southern reaches of Youngstown went Pennsylvania-style with an exit tab fused to the rest of the sign (i.e. a continuous border). I don't know why the directions on the Exits 7 and 6B signs are afterthoughts - one can go both directions at Exit 7, but north (or east, although US 62 is usually signed north-south) is the only direction to go from Exit 6B, and I don't think it's ever been any other way. The freeway from Exit 6B hits a stub at Albert St., but was supposed to continue north, tying into I-80 and carrying US 62 and OH 7 around Hubbard.


A sign from the earliest days of experimentation with diagrammatic arrows - clearly this one has not withstood the test of time.


OH 711, a southward extension from OH 11 where it meets and multiplexes with I-80, is really a north-south route and not east-west. The reason the signs are covered over is that although the route was proposed and partially constructed in the late 1960's, it was not completed until the 2000's. In order to extend it north from US 422 (M L King Blvd.) to OH 11/I-80, the entire existing roadway was closed and reconstructed. It was already numbered OH 711 during the 30-odd years of its truncated existence, in anticipation of its eventual completion (there had also been ghost ramps at I-80, now of course open to traffic). The M L King Blvd. patches might be button copy, as a closeup on roadfan.com shows was the case on OH 711 itself. (By the way, I highly recommend that page for your OH 711 fix.)


Everything looks perfectly numbered except for that one exit. In a blunder, ODOT removed the Exit 2 tabs for the TO I-80 EAST reassurances (which went up once the I-80/Salt Springs Rd. interchange was constructed in the 1990's), instead of posting additional guide signs or (gasp) replacing the signs. After coming back on from Meridian Rd. you get the first of my two northbound photos, the original sign for milepost 2.1.


The other one of my photos is sandwiched in here. In case of traffic, use OH 11 as Alternate I-80 south one exit to Mahoning Rd., CR 18 (former OH 18), and over to a direct connection to the Ohio Turnpike tollbooths. Hey, no one said it was Alternate free I-80.

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Exit 14 to OH 164
Onto I-76, Ohio Turnpike
Exit 11 to US 224
Exit 9 to OH 170
Exit 7 or 6B to US 62
Exit 7 or 6B to OH 7
Exit 4 to US 422
Exit 2 to Meridian Rd.
Exit 1 to OH 11
Onto I-80
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