ATRI Releases List of Top 10 Truck Bottlenecks

Ever heard of a seven-peat? Nope, neither have we. However, the intersection of I-95 and State Route 4 leading to the George Washington Bridge connecting Fort Lee, NJ and New York City, has again earned the title of the #1 bottleneck in the country – for the seventh year in a row!

Using truck GPS data, the American Transportation Research Institute (ATRI) annually measures the level of truck-involved congestion at hundreds of U.S. locations on the national highway system. The analysis, based on a large database, uses customized software applications and analysis methods, along with terabytes of data from trucking operations to produce a congestion impact ranking for each location. This data is also used to support the U.S. Department of Transportation Freight Mobility Initiative.

The bottlenecks detailed in this latest ATRI list represent the top 100 congested locations across more than 325 freight-critical locations ATRI continuously monitors.

The top 10 2024 bottleneck locations were:

1. Fort Lee, N.J.: I-95 at SR 4
2. Chicago: I-294 at I-290/I-88
3. Houston: I-45 at I-69/US 59
4. Atlanta: I-285 at I-85 (North)
5. Nashville: I-24/I-40 at I-440 (East)
6. Atlanta: I-75 at I-285 (North)
7. Los Angeles: SR 60 at SR 57
8. Cincinnati: I-71 at I-75
9. Houston: I-10 at I-45
10. Atlanta: I-20 at I-285 (West)

“Delays inflicted on truckers by congestion are the equivalent of 436,000 drivers sitting idle for an entire year,” said ATRI President Rebecca Brewster. “These metrics are getting worse, but the good news is that states do not need to accept the status quo.”

ATRI’s highly respected data gives policymakers a road map to reduce chokepoints, lower emissions, and drive economic growth, the ATRI report said. However, ATRI’s current analysis of 2024 data found that traffic conditions continue to deteriorate compared with recent years, in some instances due to work zones resulting from increased infrastructure investment.

Average rush hour truck speeds were 34.2 mph, down 3% from the previous year. Among the top 10 locations, average rush hour truck speeds were 29.7 mph.

You can download the full report here at https://truckingresearch.org/2025/02/top-100-truck-bottlenecks-2025/.