For a city surrounded by water, New York can’t seem to find a place for its boats.
The region’s largest and busiest port—the Port of New York and New Jersey—is experiencing longer wait times and unusual backups as a national supply chain shortage threatens to bottle up the region’s maritime choke point just as goods are set to arrive for the holidays.
The inability to unload imports because of a nationwide shortage of trucking and rail cars, increased cargo volumes coming from Asia and a global decline of available shipping containers have all contributed to backlogs at quays in New York and Los Angeles, said Ira Breskin, senior lecturer at the State University of New York Maritime College.