Los Angeles, Long Beach inbound traffic up 5% in September

Los Angeles, Long Beach inbound traffic up 5% in September    Inbound container traffic rose 5 percent on average in September at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, but with the port of Long Beach attracting all the cargo growth at the expense of its neighboring port.
   Long Beach handled 255,592 inbound loaded TEUs in September, 24 percent more than in the same month a year ago.
   During the same month, Los Angeles saw its inbound loaded traffic decline 7 percent, to 318,722 TEUs, from 342,068 TEUs in September 2003.
   The ports’ combined volume of full inbound containers went up 5 percent to 574,314 TEUs in September, from 548,383 TEUs a year earlier. The relatively modest year-on-year growth suggests that ongoing congestion at the Los Angeles-Long Beach harbor complex had a negative effect on volumes handled last month, as carriers sought to redirect traffic to less busy ports.
   The two ports’ combined outbound loaded traffic rose 2 percent in September to 152,319 TEUs. Long Beach saw its outbound volume jump 16 percent to 76,190 TEUs, while Los Angeles witnessed a 9 percent drop in outbound traffic to 76,129 TEUs, slightly less than its neighbor.
   The growing imbalance between inbound and outbound cargo volumes led to a combined 16 percent rise in empty container traffic at the two ports, to 360,524 TEUs. Long Beach in particular handled 51 percent more empty boxes in September than a year earlier.
   Total port traffic in September including empty boxes went up 30 percent in Long Beach, to 494,376 TEUs, and dropped 5 percent in Los Angeles to 592,781 TEUs.
   For the first nine months of this year, total port volume in Long Beach soared 20.5 percent to 4.1 million TEUs, whereas Los Angeles reported a 3-percent growth to 5.5 million TEUs over the same period.