On April 8, 2024, a total solar eclipse stretched across North America from Mexico to Canada, experiencing complete totality across some major cities, like 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.
The first US state to see the eclipse was Texas, where 200 significant traffic bottlenecks formed on Interstates, highways and key arterials – along with hundreds of smaller traffic jams – throughout the path of totality. Those 200 bottlenecks are shown above.
More specifically, the top 10 bottleneck locations are highlighted on the map above. Within the top bottlenecks, travel speeds the morning of the eclipse dropped 65% over the previous Monday with travel speeds at 22.5 mph heading southbound.
Post eclipse, travel speeds dropped nearly 60% compared to a normal Monday to 19.9 mph, before rebounding at about 7:00PM to normal speeds in the Eastbound direction.
I-10 around San Antonio saw the greatest impact from large traffic bottlenecks. Routes going in and out of the city experienced heavy delays along with some of the longest bottlenecks. Traffic jams on I-10 Eastbound at Exit 527 stretched longer than 19 miles while I-10 Westbound at Ranger Creek Road/Exit 538 was more than 13 miles in length.
INRIX will continue to report on the effects of the eclipse on traffic congestion during this historic event.