Port of Vancouver stakeholders expect they will have to navigate at least three more weeks of congestion as Canada\u2019s largest port works to clear a backlog of rail containers that built up in December.<\/p>\n
A confluence of factors \u2014 including vessel bunching at Asian load ports, a pre-Lunar New Year cargo surge, a strike by dockworker foremen in November and shorter trains due to winter operating conditions \u2014 combined to cause congestion at the port and reduce Vancouver\u2019s railcar availability last month. As a result, the average rail container dwell time at the port\u2019s four container terminals spiked to 6.9 days in December \u2014 the highest since last March \u2013 and up from 5.2 days in November and 4.5 days in October, according to data on the port\u2019s website.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are seeing an increase in the number of vessels waiting to enter the Port of Vancouver due to arrival delays associated with winter weather in Asia and the seasonal pre-Lunar New Year impact causing a surge in volume,\u201d a spokesperson for the Vancouver Fraser Port Authority told the Journal of Commerce Wednesday. \u201cAs such, we anticipate that high on-dock times will continue for the rest of January.\u201d<\/p>\n
Terminal operators and the railroads say they are chipping away at the rail container backlog and note conditions will improve further at the end of the month when import volumes are expected to drop significantly due to many factories in Asia closing for a week or two for the Lunar New Year celebrations that start Jan. 29.<\/p>\n
Train restrictions during Canadian cold snap<\/p>\n
Canadian National Railway (CN) in December was already recovering from a backlog of rail containers from the dockworkers\u2019 strike and vessel bunching when a cold snap in Western Canada resulted in operating restrictions, including running shorter trains, that impacted CN\u2019s network velocity, a CN spokesperson told the Journal of Commerce.<\/p>\n
\u201cCN is working closely with the port operators to clear out these volumes as the vessel discharge normalizes over the next three weeks,\u201d a spokesperson for the railroad said. \u201cWe are already seeing some improvements and are confident that the dwell metric will fall back to normal levels as we catch up on the backlog over the next few weeks.\u201d<\/p>\n
Canadian Pacific Kansas City (CPKC) said Thursday its railcars are cycling efficiently through its network and that the supply of cars is good. Demand is forecast to remain strong through January, a CPKC spokesperson said.<\/p>\n
DP World Canada, which operates the Centerm terminal in Vancouver, said it is working with the railroads to handle the increased import volumes leading up to the Lunar New Year on Jan. 29.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe should be back to normal in a few weeks,\u201d said CEO Doug Smith.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, the elevated rail container dwell times at the marine terminals have not had an impact on drayage operations in Vancouver, said David Earle, CEO of the British Columbia Trucking Association. The only change Earle said he\u2019s noted in recent days is that a small number of inbound containers that had been booked to leave the terminals by rail are being redirected to long-haul truckers for movement inland.<\/p>\n
Prince Rupert back to normal<\/p>\n
The Port of Prince Rupert, which faced challenges similar to Vancouver last month, saw its rail container dwell times spike to an average of nearly 10 days in mid-December, said Brian Friesen, vice president of trade development at the port. The average dwell dropped to 6.1 days for the week of Dec. 20 and has continued to slide in January.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe dwells are now below two days,\u201d Friesen said. \u201cIt\u2019s all fluid now.\u201d<\/p>\n
Source:<\/p>\n
Mongelluzzo, B. (2025, January 9). Vancouver braces for congestion, High Rail dwells through January<\/i>. Journal of Commerce. https:\/\/www.joc.com\/article\/vancouver-braces-for-congestion-high-rail-dwells-through-january-5919982<\/p>\n Port of Vancouver stakeholders expect they will have to navigate at least three more weeks of congestion as Canada\u2019s largest port works to clear a backlog of rail containers that built up in December. A confluence of factors \u2014 including vessel bunching at Asian load ports, a pre-Lunar New Year cargo surge, a strike by …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[78],"tags":[86,84],"class_list":["post-3162","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-canadian-ports","tag-maritime"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/ems.cohesionfreight.com.hk:8080\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3162","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/ems.cohesionfreight.com.hk:8080\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/ems.cohesionfreight.com.hk:8080\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ems.cohesionfreight.com.hk:8080\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ems.cohesionfreight.com.hk:8080\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3162"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/ems.cohesionfreight.com.hk:8080\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3162\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3163,"href":"http:\/\/ems.cohesionfreight.com.hk:8080\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3162\/revisions\/3163"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/ems.cohesionfreight.com.hk:8080\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3162"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ems.cohesionfreight.com.hk:8080\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3162"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ems.cohesionfreight.com.hk:8080\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3162"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}