New Section of 130 to Have 85 mph Limit
Coming this November: The fast track to Seguin. Photo illustration by Chad Elliott and Todd Wiseman/Texas TribuneBy Hady Mawajdeh
Central Texas will soon have a stretch of highway with the fastest posted speed limit in the Western Hemisphere: 85 mph.
The limit is going up on a soon-to-open stretch of State Highway 130 from Austin to Seguin. It and the rest of 130 was created to relieve I-35, one of the most congested roadways in the state.
“There’s no question that when you raise speed limits and increase speeds you increase crashes and severity of crashes when they happen,” said Russ Raider of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, a nonprofit research group in Virginia. “It’s just physics.”
Raider says that crash tests on cars are done at 35 to 45 miles per hour, speeds way below what drivers will experience on this road.
“Once you get to these extremely high speeds, you are overwhelming all of the important safety equipment and crash-worthiness engineering that is in modern engineering,” Raider said.
The section of 130 between Austin and Seguin is scheduled to open in November.
