The good news: Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro said Saturday the collapsed section of Interstate 95 in Philadelphia will be repaired within two weeks.
The bad news: Drivers traveling near one of the biggest arteries on the East Coast – one that carried 160,000 cars per day – could have at least two more weeks of increased traffic congestion.
HERE, a location data and technology platform, compared Philadelphia’s traffic patterns each day of the past week with the one before a tanker truck caught fire on June 11 and collapsed a portion of I-95. HERE’s analysis also turned up some good and bad news for drivers.
Roads included in the I-95 collapse traffic analysis
HERE collected real-time traffic analytics derived from hundreds of anonymized data sources. They looked at all highways in the Philadelphia area, including those specifically suggested as detours. The analysis also looked at surface roads within one mile of the bridge collapse.
How traffic has been affected by the I-95 bridge collapse
The bad: The first two days after the fire closed I-95 in both directions, commuters and travelers throughout the area experienced much slower travel times, according to HERE.
“In the first 48 hours, we saw a pretty severe spike in congestion,” said Kyle Jackson, principal traffic data scientist for HERE. “Highways and the entire Philadelphia metro area more than doubled in congestion compared to what’s normal.”
Throughout Philadelphia, the afternoon rush hour the day after the crash was challenging.
Percentage of roads congested during the June 12 rush hour
Whether measured by congestion or slower average speeds, drivers in some areas struggled much more than they usually do throughout the week.
“Roads in the direct vicinity of the crash site are still experiencing dramatically more congestion than usual,” Jackson said. “But even that has reduced from about eight times more than normal on Monday down to about three times more than normal on Friday.”
Within 1 mile of I-95 collapse, rush hour speeds slowed every day last week
The good: After a rough start to the week, highway congestion and average speeds looked more like those of the previous week on roads farther from the collapsed portion of I-95.
Some of the quick recovery throughout much of Philadelphia may be attributed to a better understanding detours, greater use of public transit or more residents working remotely during the repairs. But Jackson also credits the city’s large network of roads for relieving some of the pressure.
“The Philadelphia metro has a quite dense network of highways,” Jackson said. ” There were enough other roads to absorb the congestion, but now those other roads are seeing more congestion than before.”
