On April 8, 2024, a total solar eclipse stretched across North America from Mexico to Canada, experiencing complete totality across some major cities, like Mazatlán, Dallas, San Antonio, Cleveland, Indianapolis, Toronto and Montreal. Due to the rarity of these events, INRIX and others, like UMD’s CATT Lab, are continuing to analyze traffic patterns around some of the hottest destinations in the path of totality.
In our earlier blog, we focused on the totality path in Texas, the first state in the U.S. to experience totality. In our analysis, we found that travel speeds on roads heading into – and out of – the totality zone experienced significant delays. For example, some roads around San Antonio saw a 60-65% drop in travel speeds as travelers move in and out of the totality path.
Yet much of the country (and Canada, too) saw significant travel impacts as well. To analyze the road network along the path of totality, INRIX Roadway Analytics performed bottleneck analyses on multiple states, finding that traffic jams even occurred outside of the major metros.
In fact, INRIX calculated more than 1250 traffic bottleneck locations within the path of totality, consisting of more than 2300 individual traffic jams. The average traffic jam within the path of totality stretched about 4.6 miles and lasted about 38 minutes. However, when digging deeper into the most severe bottleneck locations, we gain a clearer picture of how popular the path of totality was as a destination.
The map above reveals the top 20 bottleneck locations. At these 20 locations, however, individual traffic jams stretched an average of 8.5 miles and 42.5 minutes each. Below are the rankings in various categories for further insight.
Severity Ranking:
Severity is measured by the length of traffic jams (queues) and duration (time) which is converted into an “Impact Factor.” The Impact Factor score allows comparison of bottleneck intensity between bottlenecks. For example, a bottleneck with a score of 200 is twice as severe as a bottleneck with a score of 100.
The top 10 in terms of severity are as follows:
| Rank | Region Name | Road Direction | Bottleneck Start | Impact Factor |
| 1 | New York | S | ADIRONDACK NORTHWAY / I-87 | 45,933 |
| 2 | Missouri | N | I-55 | 39,202 |
| 3 | Vermont | S | I-89 / VIETNAM VETERANS MEMORIAL HWY | 31,372 |
| 4 | New York | S | I-81 | 23,133 |
| 5 | Indiana | N | I-65 | 19,480 |
| 6 | Illinois | N | I-57 | 17,027 |
| 7 | Ontario | N | QEW / QUEEN ELIZABETH WAY / HWY-40 | 14,350 |
| 8 | Indiana | S | I-65 | 13,203 |
| 9 | Arkansas | W | I-40 / US-270 | 11,445 |
| 10 | Ohio | N | US-23 / LAKE HURON CIRCLE TOUR / I-75 | 10,254 |
Notably, I-87 Southbound near Lake George in New York state held the top bottleneck spot – the tail-end of which stretched into the totality zone as travelers left after the eclipse. That bottleneck was 17% more severe than the next bottleneck, which was logged in Missouri on I-55 Northbound near Festus post-eclipse. Despite its less severe status, however, the I-55 NB bottleneck was the longest of the top 20 recorded in the totality path at 62 miles. Other notably long bottlenecks follow:
| Region Name | Road Direction | Bottleneck Start | Bottleneck End | Avg Max Length (mi) |
| Missouri | N | I-55 | I-55 Exit 180 / MO-Z | 62.02 |
| Ontario | N | QEW / QUEEN ELIZABETH WAY / HWY-403 | Qew exit 99 / ON-403 exit 80 / ON-407 ETR exit 1 | 35.71 |
| Ohio | N | US-23 / LAKE HURON CIRCLE TOUR / I-75 | US-23 Exit 25 / Main St / Plank Rd | 31.09 |
| Indiana | S | I-65 | I-65 Exit 16 / Blue Lick Rd | 26.89 |
| Ontario | W | MACDONALD-CARTIER FWY / HWY-401 | ON-401 exits 474,474A,474B | 22.78 |
INRIX is continuing to explore traffic conditions around the eclipse. Stay tuned for more information.