I live in Washington State and noticed that several main roads like state highways did not have a speed limit set. When I use OsmAnd or Organic Maps to navigate, those apps are guessing what the speed limits are for several roads, creating very bad guesses of how long a trip will take. Fuel-efficient routes also are not optimized unless max speeds for roads are known.

I discovered several awesome websites that make finding existing speed limits a breeze. I don’t like relying on Mapillary, even though they do an amazing job in making it easier to map speed limits. I just don’t want to support their owner Meta (Facebook).

Specifically for my state, I found this website: Washington https://geo.wa.gov/datasets/WSDOT::wsdot-roadway-data-speed-limits/explore?location=47.916813%2C-118.330518%2C15

Move your mouse over any state highway, click on it, and it shows you the speed limit for that road segment.

With this website, it makes finding the speed zones significantly easier. I don’t have to use Bing Streetside or Mapillary anymore because I rely on government data instead.

I also found other state websites and will list them now so they are all grouped together.

Virginia https://www.virginiaroads.org/maps/VDOT::vdot-speed-limits-map/explore?location=37.356725%2C-78.949534%2C12&path=

North Carolina https://www.arcgis.com/apps/mapviewer/index.html?layers=2229ffaa3ea5470992d021023618e1e6

Texas https://gis-txdot.opendata.arcgis.com/datasets/txdot-speed-limits/explore?location=33.705213%2C-100.174890%2C9

Florida https://gis-fdot.opendata.arcgis.com/datasets/fdot::maximum-speed-limit-tda/explore?location=27.792987%2C-83.778658%2C7

New York https://gis.dot.ny.gov/html5viewer/?viewer=risviewer

If we get more people to check major roads and update their speed limits, routing engines like OsmAnd, Organic Maps, GraphHopper, OSRM, and Valhalla will be able to create routes that are much faster, safer, and more fuel efficient.

One thing to note is that for most of the websites I’ve linked to, you have to get express permission from the publisher to use their data.