New American Highway Users Alliance Study Identifies Top 50 Bottlenecks in US

A new study decrying the state of the nation’s congested highways arrived just in time for the holidays as a record 47 million Americans hit the road and Congress begins debating the merits of a long-term highway bill, several transportation leaders said at a Nov. 23 news conference.

The American Highway Users Alliance study identified America’s 50 worst bottlenecks for trucks and passenger vehicles in major cities from New York to Los Angeles.

The group’s president, Greg Cohen, said that the report, “Unclogging America’s Arteries 2015,” also examines the top 30 choke points and offers possible solutions.

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“There are many more bottlenecks across the country, and we have a list of congestion zones all around the country,” Cohen said.

He said that in addition to improving mobility and quality of life for motorists, fixing the top 30 bottlenecks alone would over the next 20 years save $39 billion in lost time, 830 million gallons of fuel, reduce over 17 billion pounds of greenhouse-gas emissions and prevent 211,000 vehicle crashes.

The new study’s list of bottlenecks includes trouble spots in the following Metropolitan Areas: 12 in Los Angeles, nine in and around New York City, three in Chicago, three near Washington ,D.C., three in Houston, three in Boston, three in Dallas, three in Miami, two in Atlanta, two in Philadelphia, and two in San Francisco/Oakland, the report said.

The top-ranked choke point for trucks and cars combined in the study was in Chicago on the Kennedy Expressway (Interstate-90) between the Circle Interchange (I-290) and Edens Junction (I-94).

The I-90 Chicago 12-mile bottleneck cost motorists 16.9 million hours of waiting in traffic and wasted more than 6.3 million gallons of fuel while cars idled or crawled in traffic, the study said.

Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx, speaking at the news conference, called the report “very timely” as Americans traveling for the holidays figure out their strategies to avoid bumper-to-bumper traffic by leaving early or taking the long route to save time.

“Road-dependent communities in America are going to need multimodal solutions,” Foxx said. “And this Thanksgiving, what America is getting is a preview of what we can expect to occur over the next 30 years if things go unchecked — a nation consumed by traffic and Thanksgiving traffic every day in some places around the country.”

Foxx said the country’s clogged arteries are “in need of some Lipitor.”

“That’s part of what Congress is wrestling with presently,” Foxx added. “After years of indecision and 36 short-term extensions, this Thanksgiving we are as close as we have been in more than a decade to a long-term highway bill.”

However, he said the nation is at an intersection of two “realities” — one being a finite amount of resources and the other that what the nation can afford right now may not be enough for tomorrow’s transportation infrastructure  needs.

Foxx said he is hopeful that a long-term bill will be passed by the time the current authorization of highway programs expires Dec. 4.

Bill Graves, president of American Trucking Associations and chairman of the Highway Users Alliance, also said that chances are good that Congress with complete a long-term bill this year.

“Our highways are the circulatory system carrying the commerce that’s the lifeblood of this nation’s economy,” Graves said. “When we hit bottlenecks it’s unhealthy for America for a variety of reasons.”