NJ highway tops list of the 100 most congested U.S. truck spots

An notorious North Jersey highway spot tops an annual list of the country's most congested bottlenecks for trucks.

The intersection of Interstate 95 (which at that point is the northern stretch of the New Jersey Turnpike) and state Route 4 in Fort Lee is once again the No. 1 freight bottleneck in the country, according to the American Transportation Research Institute.

The same spot topped the rankings last year for the first time since 2014, but the ramps to the GWB have been in the "top 10 for a while" on the annual congestion list, New Jersey Motor Truck Association Executive Director Gail Toth said.

"We're dealing with very old infrastructure," which also is made difficult by a lack of options to expand among dense development in the state, Toth said.

She added there doesn't seem to be an easy, simple solution to fixing the congestion there, which is "a really serious problem," noting priority needs to be given to studying what could be done to ease the highway congestion.

Toth said part of the problem is that mass transit is not really a viable option for many travelers, as NJ Transit continues to deal with its own transportation challenges.

She said the reality is a lot of people are passing through that span just to continue up Route 95.

Toth said she has been hearing of more freight trucks being re-routed in order to avoid being stuck in gridlock of well over an hour, during any given weekday rush period.

The only other New Jersey spot to make the 100 top congested locations is Route 287 in Piscataway, ranked at number 70.

Last year, UPS Freight president Rich McArdle noted that congestion is a critical issue, telling the ATRI that if all UPS vehicles are “delayed just five minutes a day, every day, it costs our company $114 million a year.”

The annual analysis is based on truck GPS data from more than a million heavy duty trucks along with "terabytes of data from trucking operations to produce a congestion impact ranking for each location,” according to the ATRI.

The New Jersey Motor Truck Association represents more than 450 fleets operating in New Jersey that employ well over 40,000 people, as well as 200 Allied Members that serve the trucking industry.

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