PROVIDENCE – Massachusetts will begin to change its highway exit numbers to a mileage-based numbering system to comply with a 2009 federal mandate starting in the summer of 2020, the Mass. Department of Transportation announced this week.
The Bay State will start its exit-number conversion in western Massachusetts and work east, MassDOT said. Old exit signs will remain in place for two years.
Massachusetts will be among the last states in the country to begin its conversion from sequential exit numbers.
Rhode Island has already begun to comply with the federal mandate, completing exit renumbering of Route 295 in 2017, Routes 478 and 403 in 2018, and numbering Route 146 in 2019. The R.I. Department of Transportation will be renumbering Interstates 95 and 195, as well as Routes 10, 24 and 37 over the next few years.
For highways with renumbered signs, Rhode Island plans to have old exit numbers displayed for roughly a year or more.
