Well, this is consistency that we didn't want.
Once again, Greater Cincinnati is being recognized for its horrendous traffic clusterfucks. In its 2022 “Top 100 Truck Bottlenecks” report released last week, the American Transportation Research Institute finds that the I-71 and I-75 confluence at the Brent Spence Bridge is the second-worst in the entire country. That's the same ranking as in 2021 and three spots higher than in 2020.
The annual report, which is based on the previous year's data, is based on information from GPS and other tools to determine the speed and ease in which freight trucks can move through selected locations.
According to ATRI's research based on 2021 figures, trucks on I-71/I-75 — two of the region’s major freight corridors — had a peak average speed of 33.6 MPH, a 16.3 % reduction from 2020 and a 6.7% drop from the year before that.
But the Brent Spence Bridge isn’t the only spot in Greater Cincinnati where ATRI finds major bottlenecks. The 2022 report also lists the I-71/I-75/I-275 exchange near the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport in Hebron and the I-75/I-74 exchange near Northside among the worst 100 in the nation. Both locations have dropped since the 2021 rankings, though — Hebron is now No. 71 instead of No. 24, while Northside is almost off the list at No. 96 instead of at No. 81 like last year.
For its 2021 report, ATRI found that the coronavirus pandemic affected freight traffic patterns. But this year, "traffic levels rebounded across the country as more Americans returned to work and consumer demand for goods and services continued to grow," ATRI says in a press release.
The worst bottleneck in the United States is in Fort Lee, New Jersey, for the fourth year in a row. See the full list and ATRI's research.
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