And you thought traffic jams on your way to and from work were a pain, just imagine if it WAS your job.
According to research released last week by the American Transportation Research Institute (ATRI), the trucking industry's not-for-profit research institute, traffic congestion on the nation's Interstate highways added over $9.2 billion in operational costs to the trucking industry in 2013
ATRI came up with their figures by utilizing motor carrier financial data along with billions of anonymous truck GPS data points to calculate congestion delays and costs on each mile of Interstate roadway. Delay totaled over 141 million hours of lost productivity, which equated to over 51,000 truck drivers sitting idle for a working year.
ATRI's analysis also established the states, metropolitan areas, and counties with the highest congestion costs. California led the nation with over $1.7 billion in costs, followed by Texas with over $1.0 billion. The Los Angeles metropolitan area saw the highest cost at nearly $1.1 billion and New York City was close behind at $984 million.
The analysis also demonstrates the average impact of congestion costs on a per-truck basis. For example, a truck driven for 12,000 miles in 2013 saw an average congestion cost of $408, while a truck driven for 150,000 miles had an average cost of $5,094.
"Congestion is an unfortunate byproduct of our just-in-time economy, and it's a significant roadblock to our country's productivity as well as its global competitiveness," said Jack Holmes, President of UPS Freight, the heavy freight division of UPS. "ATRI's analysis quantifies congestion in a way that clearly shows the urgent need for highway investment."
A copy of the study results is available from ATRI at www.atri-online.org.
