Road congestion cost trucking a record $108.8 BILLION in 2022, new study shows

The trucking industry lost a whopping $108.8 billion due to road congestion in the year 2022, a new study shows. 

The study was conducted by the American Transportation Research Institute for the year 2022 and was released on Wednesday, December 18th. 

The study uses average truck speeds, truck volumes, and operational costs to measure the level of congestion. Total congestion hours decreased from 2021 to 2022, but operation costs increased over the same time period, causing the congestion costs to rise 15% – from $94.6 billion in 2021 to $108.8 billion in 2022. 

“This level of delay is equivalent to more than 430,000 commercial truck drivers sitting idle for one work year and an average cost of $7,588 for every registered combination truck,” ATRI estimated.

An estimated 6.4 billion gallons of diesel worth $32.1 billion was wasted due to congestion in 2022. Total hours spent in traffic decreased 5.4% from 1.27 billion hours to 1.2 billion hours from 2021 to 2022. 

The federal government spent $52 billion on highways in 2022, and state and local governments spent $180 billion. 

“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,” the ATRI noted.