Was this another close call major issue indicating a new pattern, or was this one of tens of minor incidents that typically happened in Suez and didn't get reported on until Ever Given?
Not that the two are necessarily mutually exclusive but it's likely leaning hard towards one of the two.
ya, I wonder what the risk is of getting stuck long term like earlier this year. According to the wikipedia page it looks like it has only happened a few times in history.
"They said it took 15 minutes for tug boats swiftly dispatched to the site to refloat the vessel and allow south-bound vessels stuck behind it to resume their journey.
“It was a minor traffic issue that was resolved in less than an hour,” a senior Suez Canal official told The National on condition of anonymity.
Since the 'Ever Given' incident, the canal authority have announced a multi-billion dollar project to widen sections of the canal and install other infrastructure to ensure that no other large ships can run aground in the same manner again."
Glad to see that it was resolved quickly, and that the canal is being upgraded to make it more resilient to things like that.
The delays are happening at every interface. The port of LA/LB is the busiest port in north America and has dozens and dozens of container ships anchored off the coast waiting to unload. Even if they unloaded the ships today they couldn't move the containers off the terminal holding facilities since freight rail and freight trucking is at capacity. This is why caltrans has been desperate to widen freeways leading to the port and link the 710 in Pasadena, and to expand the alameda freight rail corridor. Freeway widening doesn't help commute times any but it leads to more trucks per hour leaving the port due to the increased throughput, which is only going to get busier over the next century.
From my understanding, the direct delays are resolved (ships are moving normally through the canal) but there are global delays that could be indirectly caused by the Ever Given or lots of other issues (understaffing at ports, closed ports in China due to COVID, high shipping demand, etc.). It’s hard to say whether the current delays would be a lot better if the Ever Given incident hadn’t occurred, although they presumably would be at least somewhat better.
The delays caused by that specific blockage may have been resolved, but overall shipping delays continue to rise, as they were even before Ever Given. One big driver for that is ports being closed in China due to workers getting sick with Delta, but also just general lack of manpower related to the quarantine.
I have a mentor who was prominent in the ship holding space and as with technology, requirements as well as desire for cost savings (bigger ships) is taking place while the infrastructure (canal) has had minimal change. It’s the classic bottleneck/theory of constraints principle. Watching to see how the canal adapts/evolves.
Not that the two are necessarily mutually exclusive but it's likely leaning hard towards one of the two.