How did travel volumes at major Canada–U.S. crossings change month‑by‑month from 2024 through January 2026?
Executive summary
Major Canada–U.S. crossings moved from a clear recovery in 2024 toward a sharp pullback in 2025 and into January 2026, with pedestrian and personal-vehicle travel climbing through 2024 from pandemic lows while 2025 saw large year‑over‑year declines in cross‑border vehicle trips reported by Statistics Canada; truck trade volumes were more stable but showed modest monthly and year‑over‑year decreases in late 2024–2025 according to U.S. Bureau of Transportation Statistics releases [1] [2] [3] [4].
1. Recovery through 2024: rising pedestrians and personal vehicles but still below 2019
Across ports in 2024 the dominant story was rebound: pedestrian and personal‑vehicle crossings rose steadily from pandemic troughs, with BTS reporting pedestrians increasing 23.6% in 2024 at the top five northern ports and personal‑vehicle counts up in regional digests such as IMTC’s 2024 Data Digest, even as volumes remained below pre‑pandemic 2019 levels [1] [2].
2. Trucks: backbone of trade, but modest month‑to‑month declines appeared
Commercial truck crossings continued to carry the bulk of bilateral trade in 2024 and into 2025, and while total truck volumes held up relative to passenger modes, BTS releases show small year‑over‑year decreases in some months and ports — for example BTS noted a 0.5% decrease in trucks at the top five northern ports in 2024 and an October 2025 monthly release reported a 7.3% drop in trucks entering the U.S. from Canada in October 2025 versus October 2024 — indicating month‑by‑month softness concentrated late in 2024 and into 2025 [1] [4].
3. 2025: a pronounced fall in Canadian vehicle travel to the United States
Statistics Canada and Canadian reporting documented a pronounced reversal in 2025 — national data show roughly 30.9% fewer Canadian automobiles visited the United States in 2025 compared with 2024, a decline echoed in media reporting that attributes the fall to a mix of exchange rates, higher prices, and shifting discretionary travel patterns though precise causal decomposition is not provided in the cited sources [3] [5].
4. Regional variations and snapshots: some crossings held steadier than national totals
Not all ports moved in lockstep: Windsor‑Detroit crossings reported a milder year‑to‑year change — about a 4.5% decline comparing 2025 to 2024 at that corridor per local operators — demonstrating that national aggregates mask port‑level month‑by‑month heterogeneity driven by local business patterns, commerce mix, and infrastructure works referenced by CBSA and regional digests [3] [2] [6].
5. Data availability, limits, and where to get month‑by‑month series
Comprehensive month‑by‑month traveller volumes exist in official datasets — BTS’s Border Crossing/Entry Data and Canada Border Services Agency’s monthly “Traveller Volumes by Port of Entry and month” dataset provide the raw monthly series by mode and port — but the reporting summaries consulted here do not include the full month‑by‑month tables for every port from January 2024 through January 2026, so a definitive month‑by‑month numeric map requires querying those open datasets directly [7] [8] [9].
6. Bottom line and recommended next step for exact month‑by‑month figures
In short, the narrative is: recovery in 2024 (especially pedestrians and personal vehicles, still below 2019), then a broad and significant drop in vehicle travel in 2025 with trucks showing smaller declines or stability; to produce a precise month‑by‑month chronology from January 2024 through January 2026 for specific major ports, the BTS Border Crossing Entry Data and the CBSA monthly traveller dataset are the primary sources to extract month‑level counts by mode and port [1] [8] [7].