America's Worst Bottlenecks And The Benefits Of Fixing Them

As Congressional debate continues on long-overdue highway legislation needed to fund road and bridge improvement projects for the next six years, a new report is sparking added urgency by ranking the nation’s worst highway bottlenecks. The report, an update of a study originally conducted in 1999, specifically quantifies how these traffic chokepoints burden the public with severe delays, degraded safety, worsened air quality and wasted fuel consumption, and it details the major benefits that will accrue from uncorking the bottlenecks... According to the study, Unclogging America’s Arteries: Effective Relief for Highway Bottlenecks (1999-2004), targeting funds to fix major bottlenecks "will reduce the amount of time commuters have to spend on the road, save thousands of lives, prevent hundreds of thousands of injuries and help us safeguard the environment." Cambridge Systematics, a well-respected transportation research firm, produced both today’s updated study and the original report for the American Highway Users Alliance.

Thanks to Chris Steins