New Jersey motorists know that heading toward the George Washington Bridge is living life in the slow lane. In fact, it’s the slowest lane in America.
For the fifth consecutive year, the intersection of Interstate 95 and Route 4 in Fort Lee on the way to the bridge was rated the nation’s worst bottleneck by the trucking industry’s American Transportation Research Institute.
Traffic going through the area traveled even slower than it did a year earlier, the report said. During peak travel times, the average speed was 20.2 miles per hour in 2022, down 10% from 22.4 mph in 2021. The average speed overall was 26.8 mph, an 11% decline from 30.1 mph a year earlier.
Some of that was due to the increase in traffic volumes returning to pre-coronavirus levels. And some of that was due to the fact that there’s no surrounding land that could be used to expand the highways in that area.
“It’s not an easy infrastructure fix,” said Rebecca Brewster, president of the institute. “It’s not an easy rebuild, it’s an entrance to a toll bridge, it’s a location where a number of roads come together, and you’re landlocked in terms of what’s all around there.”
The move to cashless tolling on the George Washington Bridge and the subsequent demolition of the existing, now-empty, toll booths may help speed traffic along, Brewster said.
“That will help,” Brewster said. “Certainly, when people have to stop at a toll booth, that certainly slows people down.”
The study, based on GPS data from 1 million trucks at 310 locations during 2022, included another New Jersey location among the top 100 top truck bottlenecks. The intersection of Interstates 76 and 676 in Camden was ranked 100th, down from 86th in 2021.
That interchange is just west of the junction of I-76, I-295 and Route 42 in Bellmawr, which is being rebuilt at a cost of $900 million.
Last year’s second-worst bottleneck, the interchange of Interstates 71 and 75 in Cincinnati, dropped to No. 16. That interchange is just north of the Brent Space Bridge connecting to Covington, Kentucky, which is being rebuilt under President Joe Biden’s $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure law. Biden and Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell went to the site in January to highlight the new law.
The new No. 2, which wasn’t among the top 100 a year ago, was the intersection of Interstate 294 at I-290/I-88 in Chicago, which now is being rebuilt at a cost of $4 billion.
Here are the top 10 traffic bottlenecks, according to 2022 data, with last year’s rankings in parentheses:
1. Fort Lee: I-95 at Route 4 (1)
2. Chicago: I-294 at I-290/I-88 (Not ranked)
3. Houston: I-45 at I-69/US 59 (3)
4. Atlanta: I-285 at I-85 (North) (4)
5. Atlanta: I-20 at I-285 (West) (5)
6. Chicago: I-290 at I-90/I-94 (6)
7. Los Angeles: Route 60 at Route 57 (7)
8. Los Angeles: I-710 at I-105 (91)
9. Nashville: I-24/I-40 at I-440 (East) (11)
10. San Bernardino, California: I-10 at I-15 (9)
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Jonathan D. Salant may be reached at jsalant@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him at @JDSalant.
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