It’s official -- Greater Cincinnati is a traffic clusterfuck.
Or, rather, it has one of the nation’s worst traffic clusterfucks.
Actually, it has three of the nation’s worst traffic clusterfucks.
Basically, Greater Cincinnati is one big clusterfuck.
In its 2021 “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, three spots higher than in the 2020 ranking.
The annual report is based on information from GPS and other tools to determine the speed and ease in which freight trucks can move through selected locations.
For 2020, ATRI finds that trucks on I-71/I-75 -- two of the region’s major freight corridors -- had a peak average speed of 44.1, an 11% change over the previous year.
The Brent Spence Bridge, a major connector between Cincinnati and Covington, has become less and less efficient for transportation over the years. A website for the bridge’s 2017 maintenance project states that the structure was originally built to carry 80,000-100,000 vehicles per day, but traffic in recent years has doubled to 160,000-180,000 vehicles each day.
In November, the Brent Spence Bridge was closed for about six weeks due to two semi-trucks crashing and causing a chemical spill. The closure caused major disruptions for commuters across the region until it reopened on Dec. 22.
But the Brent Spence Bridge isn’t the only spot in Greater Cincinnati where ATRI finds major bottlenecks. The 2021 report also lists the I-71/I-75/I-275 exchange near the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport in Hebron (No. 24) and the I-75/I-74 exchange near Northside (No. 81) among the worst 100 in the nation.
ATRI also finds that the coronavirus pandemic affected freight traffic patterns, especially during the early months of 2020. ATRI writes:
ATRI’s annual Top Truck Bottleneck Analysis uses a full year of truck GPS data to calculate the top chokepoints. However, 2020 was by all definitions a different year with pandemic-related impacts intersecting with traffic patterns. In a March 2020 analysis using its truck GPS dataset, ATRI found average truck speeds at some of the worst truck bottlenecks improve by 100% or more as car drivers sheltered in place and trucks kept moving to deliver essential goods.
In a separate analysis in April 2020, ATRI found state-level truck activity increased in early February as panic-buying drove consumer demand, followed by a decrease in truck activity as more businesses were closed. However, by April and into May, ATRI’s Truck Activity Index began to improve across the states analyzed, signaling a return to pre-pandemic freight demand.
I-95 in Fort Lee, New Jersey -- which leads into New York City -- tops the 2021 list as the worst bottleneck in the country.
Read ATRI’s full report.