ATRI Lists Most Bottlenecked Roads for 2026
Do you like traffic? If you enjoy moving at a turtle’s pace with nothing to hear but blaring horns as drivers try to maneuver around one another, here are the top spots to visit in 2026 according to the American Transportation Research Institute (ATRI). Of course, if you have disdain for the practice, knowing these locations can also be helpful in avoiding them.
Methodology
The method is the same as it always was: for 328 different corridors, find out how much impact traffic congestion has on speed for a highway multiplied by the number of trucks that traveled through for that hour, for each of the twenty-four hours in a day, and then score them based on how much the average speed deviates from the maximum speed.
That might be a bit difficult to follow, so consider this: how much total speed is lost due to traffic? It is based on the speed of the trucks and the number of trucks traveling through. For the mathematical calculation, 54 trucks traveling 54 miles per hour has the same effect on the score as one truck moving 1 mile per hour, a net impact of 54 for each.
The Top Ten
Compared to the 2025 report, there is a new king located in Chicago, Illinois. Previously second to a corridor in Fort Lee, New Jersey, the sheer number of trucks that pass through Chicago have allowed it to score a higher index score than its competitor, despite average speeds being approximately 40% faster. Here are the results, with the ATRI’s own data for each.
- Chicago, IL: I-294 at I-290/I-88
- Fort Lee, NJ: I-95 at SR 4
- Atlanta, GA: I-285 at I-85 (North)
- Houston, TX: I-45 at I-69/US 59
- Atlanta, GA: I-75 at I-285 (North)
- Atlanta, GA: I-20 at I-285 (West)
- Nashville, TN: I-24/I-40 at I-440 (East)
- Houston, TX: I-10 at I-69/US 59 (Houston jumped an impressive 77 slots from its placing in 2025).
- Cincinnati, OH: I-71 at I-75
- McDonough, GA: I-75
Conclusion
For the last report, we predicted that in 2026 that Fort Lee and Chicago would once again take the top two spots. We were right on the money, considering we did not say which order they would be in!
The only question that still remains is what is going on in Georgia: it has gained another slot to comprise 40% of the top ten list. It seems to be a hotbed for traffic, and may warrant some additional lanes and highways to handle it all.
If you wish to see the full 100 list, including the most congested corridor in your state (if it made the list at all: 28 states and Washington DC made the cut while others such as Hawaii are smooth sailing), you can do so at American Transportation Research Institute’s webpage.
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