NRF: U.S. ports experience no congestion during peak season

NRF: U.S. ports experience no congestion during peak season    The nation's major retail container ports are operating without significant congestion problems as the industry's peak shipping season comes to an end, according to the December Port Tracker report released Tuesday by the National Retail Federation and Global Insight.
   'After the past few years, it's a relief to know we've gotten through the peak of the shipping season without any serious incidents,' said Erik Autor, NRF vice president and international trade counsel, in a statement. 'There were certainly some threats from Hurricane Katrina and the storm's effect on railroad capacity, but the ports themselves didn't see the problems we've seen in the past. All in all, it's been a good year.'
   All West Coast ports covered by the report ' Los Angeles-Long Beach, Oakland, Tacoma and Seattle ' were given a 'medium' congestion rating in November to reflect railroad delays related to Hurricane Katrina, even though the ports themselves were operating smoothly. All are now rated 'low,' however, and all East Coast ports covered ' New York-New Jersey, Hampton Roads, Charleston and Savannah ' remain at 'low,' the same rating as October. A low ranking means 'business as usual' with no serious congestion, delays or diversion of cargo anticipated, NRF said.
   'The ports are in good condition,' Global Insight Economist Paul Bingham said in a statement. 'We warned of possible increases in rail problems last month, but the railroads have gotten through with few substantial delays and little congestion despite strained network and terminal capacity. Some shippers experienced intermodal rail delays, but the industry performed much better than last year at this time. There are still some lingering impacts of rail disruption due to the hurricanes, but with less volume coming into the ports the next few months we have lowered our congestion ratings for West Coast ports back to low and the Atlantic ports we cover are still rated low.'
   Nationwide, ports surveyed handled 1.37 million TEUs of container traffic during October, the most recent month for which data is available. The figure is up 7.9 percent from the same month in 2004 and 1.9 percent from September. Over the report's six-month forecast period, traffic is expected to slowly decline to a low of 1.13 million TEUs in February, still up 1.3 percent from February 2005, before starting to climb again and hitting 1.3 million TEUs in April, up 8.3 percent from April 2005.