Trumbull Co. works on replacing road signs

Staff report

WARREN

The Trumbull County Engineer’s Office is part way through replacement of all of its thousands of county road signs as required by the Federal Highway Administration and State of Ohio.

The engineer’s office recently learned it has been approved for its third $50,000 grant from the Trumbull County Engineer’s Association to complete the project.

The three $50,000 grants will be paired with as much as $37,500 from the engineer’s office.

Gary Shaffer, an engineer with the county engineer’s office, said the county has just begun to replace the signs with money from the first of the three $50,000 grants. The replacements will continue as the signs are produced and engineer employees have time to install them.

All types of signs are being replaced, including speed-limit and stop signs, Shaffer said. The new signs use better reflectivity to improve their visibility, Shaffer said.

Justin Chesnick, a spokesman for ODOT’s District 4 office in Akron, said the Federal Highway Administration mandated the replacement of such signs throughout the United States to make signs more legible and more reflective, especially for older drivers.

Ohio adopted the requirements in 2010, Chesnick said.

Another goal of the project is to require that signs be replaced periodically. No such requirement existed before, allowing some jurisdictions to leave signs in place after they had become illegible, Chesnick said.