Congestion Mitigation

At present, America's ports and Intermodal transport systems (highway and rail) are operating at capacity. The congestion in the ports and on main highway corridors has reached a critical stage in terms of inefficiency, waste, and environmental damage. Recent TEA-21 & TEA Lu legislation identified over $67 billion dollars annually of wasted motor fuel and public time due to highway congestion. The projections for the immediate and long term future are worse. The volume of containerized cargo into the U.S. was projected in 1999 to double by 2020. The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey now projects its container volume to double by 2013. To translate that congestion volume into highway statistics, the I-95 Corridor Coalition advised that trucks now move over 165 billion ton-miles of freight through the Atlantic region annually. On average, 10,000 trucks use the I-95 corridor daily, and the area is projected to service 58,000 trucks per day by the year 2020.

Current interstate highway development is estimated at $32 million per mile with the cost of each new interchange estimated at an additional $110 million. Environmentally, the costs of expansion are immense: available land for widening highways is limited and environmentally sensitive, and the major interstate route of I-95 cannot be double tracked. The solution to our Nation's capacity problem is not within the Interstate Highway System.

"The solution along the I-95 corridor is Coastal Connect"