Future Trucking
January 24, 2025The Price of Traffic
Our friends at the American Transportation Research Institute (ATRI) just published their latest study, “Cost of Congestion to the Trucking Industry.”
Delayed Traffic is Costly
Why the focus on congestion? Those of us in the industry, and those the industry affects ⏤ from growers and manufacturers to mom & pop shops and end users: we know that traffic flow is central to business.
Delays cause headaches. We’ve all been stuck in traffic. And delays cost time and money.
How much?
A lot.
From the ATRI report: “In 2021, congestion costs exceeded $94 billion. In 2022, congestion’s impact on the trucking industry was more than $108 billion annually.”
Their formula is simple. “When traffic volumes along critical freight corridors exceed highway capacity,” they write, “the ensuing congestion impedes freight movement and creates inflationary increases in the cost of goods and services.”
Part of the focus here is on fuel consumption and air quality. Traffic delays lead to diesel fuel that’s wasted, and that informs excess emission of carbon dioxide. On the financial side, that delay totaled some $32 billion in 2022.
How are we approaching the problem? Since Congress passed the Infrastructure spending bill in 2021, congestion easing has been “a focal point fro collaboration between industry advocates, government, and local communities,” according to the ATRI study.
The federal government spent $52 billion on highway work in 2022, alongside $180 billion state and local governments spent. Here’s the rub: “However, it is not clear whether all this infrastructure investment was adequately targeted to traffic congestion hotspots and bottlenecks, which is where strategic investments are most needed.”
Compounding the issue is operational cost. ATRI has averaged the per-hour cost over the years. We jumped from $63.66 per hour in 2016 to $90.78 in 2022. That’s due to a number of factors, which we’ll spotlight next time. For now, though, ATRI’s report shows a sometimes steep rise in the cost of truck transportation. And that affects wide lanes of the nation’s economy.