Traffic Bottlenecks: VA, DC Home To 2 Truck Congestion Areas

VIRGINIA/DC — It should come as no surprise that a part of Interstate 95 between Springfield and Fredericksburg is on a "worst traffic" list.

This time, it's the 2022 Top 100 Truck Bottlenecks List, on which the portion of I-95 in Stafford County ranks 70th.

The distance is only 40 miles, but it takes on average at least 90 minutes to travel from the Beltway to Fredericksburg due to the Stafford bottleneck and other spots along I-95.

A crash near the Courthouse Road exit in Stafford last Thursday involved a tractor-trailer that caused one fatality and long back-ups on I-95.

After the Virginia Department of Transportation finished building a new interchange at the "mixing bowl" in Springfield about 15 years, the area is no longer considered one of the East Coast’s worst bottlenecks.

North of Washington, D.C., the interchange of the Beltway and I-95 in College Park, Maryland, ranks 92nd on the list.

The list is compiled each year by the American Transportation Research Institute to measure the level of truck-involved congestion at more than 300 locations across the national highway system.

ATRI compiles the congestion impact ranking using GPS data from more than 1 million freight trucks, along with several customized software applications and analysis methods, and terabytes of data from trucking operations.

The data also is used to support the U.S. Department of Transportation's Freight Mobility Initiative, institute officials said.

In addition, the analysis that was pulled from 2021 data found that traffic levels across the country rebounded as more Americans returned to work and demand for consumer goods and services bounced back following the early months of the pandemic. The result was bottlenecking in supply chains, ATRI President and CEO Chris Spear said.

"ATRI's bottleneck list is a roadmap for federal and state administrators responsible for prioritizing infrastructure investments throughout the country," Spear said. "Every year, ATRI's list highlights the dire needs for modernizing and improving our roads and bridges. We have seen, most recently in Pittsburgh, that the cost of doing nothing could also cost lives. It's time to fund these projects and get our supply chains moving again."

New Jersey's Interstate 95 at State Route 4 in Fort Lee tops the list for the fourth year in a row, followed by Interstate 71 at Interstate 75 in Cincinnati at No. 2, and Houston's Interstate 45 at Interstate 69/U.S. 59. For a list of all 100 bottlenecks ranked and a full list of the report, go to ATRI's website.