INTTRA: Container dwell time at Los Angeles/Long Beach soars in 2015

Amount of time containers take to clear Southern California terminal yards increased significantly year-over-year in February, according to INTTRA’s container metrics.    Average container dwell times in the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach increased markedly year-over-year in February, according to data from the ocean freight e-commerce platform INTTRA.
   The average dwell time for a container in Long Beach rose 10.3 percent in February, to two days and 10 hours, while the rise was even more pronounced in Los Angeles – a 117.8 percent increase, to two days and 21 hours.
   Those dwell times were actually a month-to-month improvement over figures in January, when dwell times reached three days and 10 hours in Long Beach and three days and three hours in Los Angeles.
   For context, the average container dwell times for the two ports through most of 2013 was roughly 1.5 days.
   INTTRA measures dwell time, the amount of time it takes for containers to move through a port, by calculating the difference between specific status events to indicate the amount of time a container remains at a port once the vessel arrives.
   Chronic congestion, exacerbated by the effects of rancorous negotiations between the International Longshore and Warehouse Union and its employers at West Coast ports, has resulted in severe vessel arrival delays at Los Angeles and Long Beach. The congestion has spread through most terminals in the two ports, resulting in container pickup delays.
   INTTRA tracks container metrics based on data it gathers from roughly one-third of global containerized ocean bookings.