Atlanta Interchange Tops ATRI List of Worst Truck Bottlenecks in US

The nation’s worst truck bottleneck is located in Atlanta, where a five-level stack interchange known as “Spaghetti Junction” joins Interstate 285 and I-85 north, according to a new American Transportation Research Institute truck congestion survey.

The Atlanta interchange jumped two spots in the top 10 list, surpassing last year’s top spot in Fort Lee, New Jersey, where I-95 and state Route 4 merge just west of the George Washington Bridge leading into Manhattan.

“With a robust economy comes increased demand for consumer goods, the lion’s share of which is carried by truck,” Georgia Motor Trucking Association CEO Ed Crowell said in a statement. “ATRI’s ranking allows states to better understand where targeted infrastructure improvements could keep the economy moving.”

The No. 2 worst bottleneck in the survey is Chicago’s Circle Interchange at I-290 and I-90/94.

The Fort Lee bottleneck dropped to third on this year’s list.

Atlanta raced to the top due to a late blooming economic turnaround, inclement wea-ther, an increasing number of construction work zones and a federal hours-of-service restart provision that dumped more trucks on the road during peak daylight hours, said Dan Murray, ATRI’s vice president of research.

This year, four of the top 10 congested truck locations were in Houston, compared with only two in last year’s survey. The increase is largely the result of the city’s bustling economy and population growth, Murray said.

The Congestion Impact Analysis of Freight-Significant Highway Locations — which assessed the level of truck-oriented congestion at 250 locations on the national highway system in 2014 — used customized software applications and analysis along with data from trucking operations to produce a ranking for each location.

ATRI survey samples come from GPS data from about 600,000 trucks across the United States, Murray said. The locations listed in the ATRI report include the top 100 congested locations.

Louisville, Kentucky’s I-65 at the I-64/71 interchanges ranked No. 4 while Houston’s I-610 at U.S. 290 and I-10 at I-45 were fifth and sixth worst, respectively.

The remaining choke points in the top 10 were I-71 at I-75 in Cincinnati, I-45 at U.S. 59 in Houston, SR 60 at SR 57 in Los Angeles and I-10 at U.S. 59 in Houston.

Dropped from the top 10 this year were the I-70 and I-64 west interchange (which was No. 7) in St. Louis and the I-35 corridor (No. 10) in Austin, Texas.

Murray said this year’s survey shows that congestion is worsening and average speeds in the large majority of the bottleneck locations is slowing significantly.

“We know that across the whole system that trucks are slowing down more and more,” Murray said. “Mostly, we think that’s a function of a strong economy.”

For example, the average speed in the Atlanta interchange dropped to 39 mph from 42 mph last year and at peak times went to 27 mph from 30 mph.

Murray said the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s hours-of-service re-start provision that went into effect from July 2013 to December 2014 also played a role in the peak and non-peak hours truck bottlenecks.

“The movement from the 34-hour restart of trucks from driving at night, clearly had an impact as we saw the shift in truck GPS from nighttime to daytime,” Murray said. “There were 10% more trucks on the road during peak morning and afternoon times than last year.”

That rule, which required truck drivers to take off two consecutive periods of 1 a.m. to 5 a.m., had to be adhered to throughout almost all of 2014. It was suspended in December last year.

Murray also attributed the increase in congestion and delays to a rise in the number of construction zones as some states step up their road and bridge funding levels.

“Clearly we’re seeing a lot of states raise the fuel tax,” Murray said.