I was in Long Beach, California this week for a conference, and noted that immediately after the terrorist attacks they stopped all cargo vessels from entering the harbor. Today they lifted the prohibition, and apparently the dock workers were trying to make up for lost time by flooding the Long Beach Freeway with tractor-trailer rigs. The freeway wasat a dead standstill, and the containers out numbered the cars. This has nothing to do with railroading, but can anyone tell me what is the typical turn-around time on a cargo ship?
The ships in Vancouver seem to have a pretty good turn around time, maybe 24 hours? However, non-container ships often kick around for quite a few days, and even sometimes after a container ship has the containers taken off it will go and sit in the harbour for a few days before leaving. That is not all the uncommon. Vancouver has about 230 000 intermodal car shipments out of Vancouver on CPR, and about the same number on the CNR. All container movements in Vancouver (CPR) are handled by VanPort and Ballntyne Ports. Most CN shipments are out of DeltaPort, in Delta but some are out of Vanterm. Happy Railroading! Dane
