Locks · Lake Washington Ship Canal
Ballard Locks: 1,101 lockages in 30 days
The fifth-busiest federal lock by lockages. Commercial tows waited a median of 20 minutes.
The Ballard Locks, officially the Hiram M. Chittenden Locks, sit at mile 0 of the Lake Washington Ship Canal in Seattle, Washington. Between 4 September and 4 October 2026 they logged 1,101 lockages. Only four of the 173 locks with traffic in our archive locked through more often. 94% of those lockages were recreational or light boats.
A small-boat rhythm
The locks averaged 36 lockages a day. The busiest day was 11 September, with 51. Saturday was the busiest weekday and 11 am the busiest hour. Recreational and light boats account for 1,036 of the 1,101 lockages, and traffic split almost evenly, with 51% upbound. The Hiram M. Chittenden Locks opened in 1916 and have two chambers. The larger is 825 by 80 feet, with a 26-foot lift.
Few tows, short waits
65 commercial lockages moved 66 barges. The median tow pushed one barge and the largest pushed two. The median commercial wait was 20 minutes, which ranks 41st of 173 locks. Weekly medians stayed between 14 and 25 minutes. One in ten commercial tows waited longer than 36 minutes. One commercial tow in 65 waited more than an hour: the downbound West Point, pushing one barge for Western Towboat, arrived on 21 September and waited 65 minutes. Across all commercial lockages, tows spent 22 hours waiting. No commercial lockage carried a hazardous-cargo flag.
One boat, half the freight
| Operator | Lockages | Barges | Hours waited |
|---|---|---|---|
| Island Tug & Barge | 33 | 33 | 10 |
| Western Towboat | 24 | 24 | 9 |
| Coastal Transportation | 3 | 3 | 1 |
| Unidentified | 3 | 4 | 2 |
Island Tug & Barge made 33 of the 65 commercial lockages with a single vessel. Western Towboat made 24 with four.
No live queue
The Corps publishes no live queue status for the Ballard Locks, so this record comes from completed lockages only. The live Hiram M. Chittenden Locks page adds each lockage as it is reported.
Sources: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Lock Performance Monitoring System, archived by Lock Wait; chamber dimensions and opening year from the BTS National Transportation Atlas; operators from the USACE Waterborne Transportation Lines (2022) and FCC ship licences. Wait is measured from arrival to start of lockage. How every number is defined.