The Port of Vancouver hit a grim milestone this week as the number of ships waiting for a berth reached 60 despite the resumption of rail service.
It happened Tuesday night, and included nine container, 17 grain and 16 coal vessels. The number had dipped to 57 as of late Wednesday.
The Vancouver Fraser Port Authority, in an operations update Wednesday, reported that “anchorage demand continues to exceed capacity” as Canada’s largest port continues to battle the impacts of the flooding and landslides that hit British Columbia in mid-November, cutting off CN and Canadian Pacific rail service.
While CN and CP have since reopened their rail lines serving the port — between Kamloops and Vancouver — they still aren’t operating at full capacity. And the volume of containers has picked up, particularly since CN began moving trains between Kamloops and Vancouver over the weekend.
The volume of containers leaving Vancouver via rail has increased by nearly 250% in the past week, according to FreightWaves SONAR platform, but remained about 40% lower than before flooding and landslides cut off CN and Canadian CP service to the port more than three weeks ago.
Bruce Rodgers, executive director of the Canadian International Freight Forwarders Association, told American Shipper that the recovery is being hampered by the slower speeds and reduced train sizes that come with winter operations.
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Source: Freight Waves
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