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Freight Mobility Trends and Highway Bottlenecks

The Federal Highway Administration’s (FHWA) Office of Operations has created a Freight Mobility Trends Analysis Tool to present national freight statistics and identify freight highway bottlenecks on the Interstate System, National Highway System (NHS), National Highway Freight Network (NHFN), and Strategic Highway Network (STRAHNET). This page provides information on Freight Mobility Trends. 

Freight Mobility Trends Report

The Freight Mobility Trends Report provides high-level, national trends in freight mobility and assesses freight movement over a range of locations based on truck travel data:

• Measures of freight mobility at the National, State, regional, or corridor level.
• Freight mobility around major ports, intermodal facilities, and border crossings.
• Identification of freight highway bottlenecks.

The Freight Mobility Trends Report uses vehicle probe-based travel time data from FHWA's National Performance Management Research Data Set (NPMRDS). The report is produced annually and compares data from the most recent year to the previous year.

2019 Freight Mobility Trends Report

Freight Mobility Trends Tool

The FHWA Freight Mobility Trends Analysis Tool is an interactive dashboard that presents National freight statistics and identifies freight highway bottlenecks on the Interstate System, NHS, NHFN, and STRAHNET. This program uses a Freight Mobility Trends dashboard with indicators to assess freight movement based on truck travel data.

The Freight Mobility Trends dashboard added two truck performance indicators 1) Truck CO2 Emission using EPA’s MOVES data, truck volume, and speed, and 2) FAF Value based on FAF’s commodity data to improve the tool.

The three dashboards are as follows:

• National, State, and Urban Area Freight Statistics: This view provides a national overview of freight performance measures, State and urban area/Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) performance, and a comparison tool to view State and urban area/MPO trends.
• National Freight Bottlenecks: This view provides a ranked list of specific freight bottlenecks nationally or by state in addition to more detailed information. The visualization also includes a separate view of the freight bottlenecks around airports, border areas, intermodal facilities, and ports.
  
• National Freight Commodity Corridors: This view provides an overview of national freight corridors.

  General instructions are available at: Freight Mobility Trends instructions.

Freight Highway Bottlenecks

The Freight Mobility Trends Analysis Tool was used to identify major freight highway bottlenecks and congested corridors based on annual truck-hours of delay per mile. Delay per mile is calculated for each Interstate segment using the NPMRDS travel time data. The delay per mile measure compares performance over the entire Interstate System and across all States for corridors of different lengths.

The following Freight Highway Bottleneck Reports list the top 100 Interstate bottlenecks and congested corridors in the United States. FHWA conducts this analysis on an annual basis to update the list, track trends, and gain insight into successful transportation management techniques to address congestion at major bottlenecks.

2021 National List of Major Freight Highway Bottlenecks and Congested Corridors (HTML, PDF 1MB)

2020 National List of Major Freight Highway Bottlenecks and Congested Corridors (HTML, PDF 1.2MB)

2019 National List of Major Freight Highway Bottlenecks and Congested Corridors (HTML, PDF 656KB)

2018 National List of Major Freight Highway Bottlenecks and Congested Corridors (HTML, PDF 510KB)

This analysis uses delay per mile to assess bottlenecks over the entire Interstate System. Individual State Departments of Transportation (DOTs) and MPOs use a variety of bottleneck identification methods based upon their local traffic characteristics, infrastructure constraints, and impediments to efficient freight movement. These methods include congestion, delay, reliability, and truck-specific infrastructure restrictions. FHWA recommends reviewing individual State Freight Plans for State-specific bottleneck analysis.

Staff Contacts

Jaesup Lee
202-366-2317
Jaesup.Lee@dot.gov