NYC Suburb Tops Chicago as Worst Traffic Bottleneck, Says ATRI Survey

This story appears in the Jan. 5 print edition of Transport Topics.

The nation’s worst traffic bottleneck is located in Fort Lee, New Jersey, where Interstate 95 and state Road 4 merge just west of Manhattan’s George Washington Bridge, according to a new American Transportation Research Institute survey.

That’s not exactly news to Ray Hoskins, safety supervisor for North Brunswick, New Jersey-based Eastern Freight Ways Inc., who has driven through the bottleneck countless times in his 12 years driving the route.

It’s not unusual for a trucker to spend three to four hours to travel the approximately 2-mile mess leading to and over the bridge, Hoskins said.

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That is, if there are no crashes, stalled vehicles, extra-wide loads or New York Yankees games, he said.

“The bottleneck really dampens your productivity and operations,” Hoskins said. “It’s a pretty drastic bottleneck. The lanes are very narrow, there are 10 to 12 gates for a vehicle to go onto the bridge and there are only four lanes each way. It’s ridiculous.”

The Fort Lee interchange is only one among 100 bottlenecks that ATRI researchers documented nationwide from 250 locations sampled with sophisticated technological tools.

ATRI’s report, released Dec. 17, said the New Jersey bottleneck replaced perennial first place holder, Chicago’s Circle Interchange at I-290 and I-90/I-94, largely due to overnight construction on the top deck of the Washington Bridge.

“Based on anecdotal information and case-study analyses, work zones appear to have the greatest impact on rank order changes,” ATRI said.

In addition, ATRI said, “It appears that the 2013 change to the hours-of-service regulation, which promulgated the movement of trucks from night time to daytime driving, may also have had an impact.”

Atlanta’s I-285 at I-85 north interchange was the third worst bottleneck, followed by Cincinnati’s I-71 at I-75 interchange and Houston’s I-45 at U.S. 59.

The Nos. 6-10 most congested choke points were Houston’s I-610 at U.S. 290 interchange; St. Louis’ I-70 at I-64 west interchange; Los Angeles’ merger of state roads 60 and 57; Louisville, Kentucky’s I-65 at I-64/I-71; and I-35 in Austin, Texas.

ATRI has been studying bottlenecks annually since 2007 utilizing customized software applications and analysis methods, along with terabytes of anonymous data collected from literally hundreds of thousands of trucks, carrier operations and Federal Highway Administration data to produce the congestion-impact ranking.

ATRI said the 250 monitored locations were developed from multiple years of data analysis, past research identifying freight-flow congestion in these areas, surveys of private and public sector stakeholders, and through the use of available highway speed and volume-related datasets.

During the last recession, the analysis showed that the average speed of trucks even in congested urban areas was increasing. But with the recent upswing in the economy, truck travel speeds are again slowing nationwide, said Dan Murray, vice president of research for ATRI.

Those carriers that seem to be most adversely affected by the bottlenecks are those less-than-truckload, pickup and delivery, and courier services with operations in suburban and urban areas, he said.

The analysis has several uses, Murray said.

“The federal government will use it to try to motivate the development of bottleneck and freight-oriented programs, particularly if we get a new transportation bill,” he said. “The timing of this list is very strategic in trying to populate the next MAP-21 legislation.”

Murray added, “Most folks who are not planners and managers use the list as sort of a tool to motivate decision-makers, legislators and members of Congress to do something about it. Nobody wants to be on the top-10 bottleneck list.”

A case in point: Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn, who said he was tired of being on the list, last year authorized the expenditures to design and reconstruct the notorious Chicago Circle Interchange.

“Better-informed decisions mean more targeted infrastructure investment at critical freight nodes,” said Matt Hart, president of the Illinois Trucking Association and a member of ATRI’s research advisory committee. “Here in Illinois we’re seeing firsthand how ATRI’s identification of the Circle Interchange as the No. 1 freight bottleneck in previous studies led to a significant state investment to fix the choke point.”

The full ATRI report can be obtained at http://atri-online.org.