On Feb. 9, the American Transportation Research Institute released its annual list of America’s 100 most congested bottlenecks for trucks, and it makes the biggest instigator even more infamous.
Using GPS data from over 1 million freight trucks to analyze congestion, ATRI found that the intersection of I-95 and SR 4 in Fort Lee, New Jersey topped the list for a fourth straight year as the worst truck bottleneck in the U.S.
The intersection — just west of the George Washington Bridge — is where Interstate 95 meets Route 4 along the border of New Jersey and New York. Let’s give it a look and … yeah … it’s disgusting. It looks like a clump of wet spaghetti.
That stretch of roadway is a major logistics corridor for the Ports of New York and New Jersey and general traffic in America’s largest metropolitan area. Port authority data shows that traffic on the nearby George Washington Bridge inceased 17% during the first 11 months of 2021 compared to 2020 as industry and consumer activity picked up coming out of 2020’s pandemic lockdowns.
Likewise, ATRI data shows that average speed on that intersection was a blazing 30.1 miles per hour during January to November 2021, slowing to 22.4 during peak traffic — which is 28.2% slower than it was during 2020.
Other major truck bottlenecks in ATRI’s top 5 include I-71 at I-75 in Cincinnati; I-45 at I-69/US 59 in Houston; and the duo of Atlanta’s I-285 at I-85 North and I-20 at I-285 West.
While New Jersey had the worst bottleneck, Texas led all states with 14 bottlenecks in the top 100, including four of the top 15. Georgia and Tennessee each had nine, California had eight and Washington had seven.
