Traffic congestion on the National Highway System (NHS) added over $63.4 billion in operational costs to the trucking industry in 2015, reports the American Transportation Research Institute.
“Congestion-related costs continue to rise and impact our supply chains,” says said Rich McArdle, president of UPS Freight. “A five-minute delay for each UPS vehicle, every day, costs UPS $105 million annually in additional operating costs.”
He adds, “ATRI's report quantifies this drain on the economy which must be addressed through targeted infrastructure investments.”
ATRI is the transportation research arm that is part of American Trucking Associations.
ATRI calculated that delays on the NHS totaled more than 996 million hours of lost productivity, which equates to 362,243 commercial truck drivers sitting idle for a working year.
ATRI said the top 10 states that experienced costs of over $2 billion each, with Florida and Texas leading with more than $5 billion each.
The remaining top 10 states, in order of the trucking costs created by congestion, are California, New York, New Jersey, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Tennessee and North Carolina.
As expected, traffic congestion tended to be most severe in urban areas, with 88% of the congestion costs concentrated on only 17% of the network mileage, and 91% of the total congestion cost occurring in metropolitan areas.
The top five most congested metropolitan areas are New York-Newark, Chicago, Miami-Fort Lauderdale, Philadelphia and Dallas-Fort Worth.
ATRI also studied counties, with Cook County, IL, where Chicago is located, recording the highest cost of congestion at $1 billion.
New York City area counties held the top four spots on the list. On a per-mile basis, New York was the highest cost at $2.6 million.