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In July, container volume at the Port of Long Beach, Calif., dropped 8.8 percent to 522,486 20-foot equivalent units (TEUs) compared with July 2011.

Imports dropped 10 percent to 261,233 TEUs, exports declined 1.9 percent to 124,574 TEUs and empty container volume fell 12.2 percent to 136,679 TEUs.

“Through July, overall container traffic at the port is down 5.5 percent,” port officials said in a prepared statement. “The decrease in volumes is partly due to the slow national economic recovery, which led to the elimination of ship calls by several niche service strings.”

At the Port of Los Angeles, July volume totaled 726,375 TEUs, up 5.5 percent on a year-over-year basis.

Loaded inbound containers increased 4 percent to 371,859 TEUs, loaded outbound containers inched up 0.3 percent to 165,581 TEUs, total loaded containers rose 2.8 percent to 537,440 TEUs and total empties jumped 14.1 percent to 188,935 TEUs.

Through July, year-to-date volume totaled 4,736,579 TEUs, up 6.3 percent compared with the same 2011 period.

Meanwhile, the Port of Seattle Commission approved the sale of portions of the Eastside Rail Corridor to King County and agreed to grant the county a permanent easement over a portion of the corridor that’s still used for freight-rail service.

The easement will enable the county to develop a recreational trail. The transaction still must be approved by the King County Council.
 
In 2003, BNSF Railway Co. announced plans to sell the 42-mile corridor. In 2007, the Port of Seattle signed a memorandum of understanding with BNSF to acquire the corridor and began a federal rail-banking process. King County partnered with the port in 2007, and Sound Transit, Puget Sound Energy and the cities of Kirkland and Redmond joined the corridor preservation effort in 2009.