Locks · Gulf Intracoastal Waterway
Calcasieu Lock: five-hour waits for two-barge tows
Only one lock handled more lockages, and only two kept tows waiting longer.
Calcasieu Lock sits at mile 238.5 of the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway, at Lake Charles, Louisiana. Between 3 September and 4 October 2026, 1,165 commercial tows locked through. The median one waited just over five hours from arrival to the start of its lockage. That is the third-longest median wait of the 173 locks with traffic in our archive.
Busy and slow at once
Calcasieu logged 1,274 lockages in all, second only to Chicago Lock. 87% of commercial tows waited more than an hour, and 20% waited more than twelve. One in ten waited longer than 17.5 hours. The longest wait we recorded was 34.7 hours: the upbound Cathy, pushing 2 barges for Enterprise Marine Services, arrived on 22 September. Across all commercial lockages, tows spent 8,279 hours waiting, about 345 days in five weeks.
Short lockages, one chamber
The lock has a single chamber, 1,205 by 75 feet, with a 4-foot lift. It opened in 1950. The median commercial tow pushed 2 barges and the largest pushed 8. Each lockage lifts a small tow 4 feet. The wait builds from volume: an average of 40 lockages a day through one chamber, peaking at 53 on 3 October.
Who waits
| Operator | Lockages | Barges | Hours waited |
|---|---|---|---|
| Kirby Inland Marine | 137 | 277 | 940 |
| Enterprise Marine Services | 68 | 131 | 491 |
| Blessey Marine Services | 66 | 123 | 523 |
| Canal Barge | 57 | 186 | 444 |
| Marquette Transportation River | 57 | 284 | 399 |
| Le Beouf Brothers Towing | 56 | 108 | 365 |
530 vessels used the lock. Half of commercial lockages carried a hazardous-cargo flag.
Week to week
Weekly median waits ran 3.1 and 3.5 hours in early September, peaked at 8.5 hours in the week ending 20 September, and read 4.2 and 6.1 hours in the two weeks after. The last week is likely understated. A tow still waiting when we collected the data has no lockage yet, so the longest waits are the last to appear.
The Corps publishes no live queue status for Calcasieu, so this record comes from completed lockages only. The live Calcasieu Lock page adds each lockage as it is reported.
Related
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.