ATRI’s 2025 Worst Truck Bottlenecks
Traffic can often be seen as a necessary evil, as collisions are negatively correlated with the number of vehicles on the road. Sometimes, however, traffic jams can go too far, and that is what the American Trucking Research Institute (ATRI) tracks every year to find the biggest bottlenecks plaguing the trucking industry.
Methodology
The methodology follows that of previous years. ATRI finds the “Free Flow” speed, then finds how much slower traffic is each hour of a given day, then adds those 24 hours up and multiples it by the number of trucks affected. This way, massive traffic jams that only impact one or two trucks has a lower chance of being labeled one of the worst bottlenecks than one that mildly inconveniences thousands. They counted 328 locations in total.
List
The full list can be seen on the ATRI’s webpage of the Top 100 Truck Bottlenecks for 2025, if you want to see where the roads for your route stack up. Here are the top ten in descending order, with ATRI’s data for each:
- Atlanta, GA: I-20 at I-285 (West)
- Houston, TX: I-10 at I-45
- Cincinnati, OH: I-71 at I-75
- Los Angeles, CA: SR 60 at SR 57
- Atlanta, GA: I-75 at I-285 (North)
- Nashville, TN: I-24/I-40 at I-440 (East)
- Atlanta, GA: I-285 at I-85 (North)
- Houston, TX: I-45 at I-69/US 59
- Chicago, IL: I-294 at I-290/I-88
- Fort Lee, NJ: I-95 at SR 4
Fort Lee, Chicago, and Los Angeles keep their positions at numbers one, two and seven respectively, while others are shuffled around.
Conclusion
The data shows year after year, with very few new entrants into the top 10, that metropolitan areas need some sort of solution for congestion in order for trucks to operate there more effectively. The obvious solution would be to build more roads, but that takes time and often results in lanes being closed in the interim so construction workers can do their jobs. Perhaps the development of “truck-only” routes off the beaten path can alleviate some of the lost time without having to further impede the lanes that are already open for use.
See you all in 2026 when ATRI releases that report. We are placing our chips on Fort Lee and Chicago both being in the top two slots!
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