Rivers · Ohio River
Ohio River locks: all 21, Emsworth to Olmsted
At 16 of the 19 working locks, the typical tow waited under an hour. Three hold two thirds of the river's waiting time.
The Ohio River locks number 21, from Emsworth at mile 6.2 to Olmsted at mile 964.4. Between 4 September and 4 October 2026, 19 of them recorded 7,353 lockages that moved 58,361 barges. Lock and Dam 52 and Lock and Dam 53 recorded no lockages.
Every lock, upstream to downstream
| Lock | Mile | Lockages | Median wait |
|---|---|---|---|
| Emsworth Lock and Dam | 6.2 | 352 | 0 min |
| Dashields Lock and Dam | 13.3 | 306 | 1 min |
| Montgomery Lock and Dam | 31.7 | 280 | 2 min |
| New Cumberland Lock and Dam | 54.4 | 277 | 1 min |
| Pike Island Lock and Dam | 84.2 | 393 | 1 min |
| Hannibal Locks and Dam | 126.4 | 384 | 31 min |
| Willow Island Locks and Dam | 161.7 | 414 | 9 min |
| Belleville Locks and Dam | 203.9 | 371 | 28 min |
| Racine Locks and Dam | 237.5 | 341 | 18 min |
| Robert C. Byrd Locks and Dam | 279.2 | 312 | 11 min |
| Greenup Locks and Dam | 341.0 | 305 | 1 min |
| Capt Ant Meldahl Locks and Dam | 436.2 | 293 | 3.6 h |
| Markland Locks and Dam | 531.5 | 401 | 18 min |
| McAlpine Locks and Dam | 606.8 | 398 | 1 min |
| Cannelton Lock and Dam | 720.7 | 408 | 20 min |
| Newburgh Lock and Dam | 776.1 | 510 | 37 min |
| John T. Myers Lock & Dam | 846.0 | 495 | 38 min |
| Smithland Lock and Dam | 918.5 | 499 | 2.2 h |
| Lock and Dam 52 | 938.9 | 0 | None recorded |
| Lock and Dam 53 | 962.6 | 0 | None recorded |
| Olmsted Locks and Dam | 964.4 | 614 | 3.8 h |
Traffic grows downstream
Emsworth passed 1,168 barges. McAlpine, at mile 606.8, passed 3,987. Olmsted Locks and Dam, the last lock on the river, was the busiest: 614 lockages and 5,301 barges. Newburgh, John T. Myers and Smithland each handled about 500 lockages.
Three locks hold most of the waiting
Commercial tows on the Ohio waited 10,465 hours, about 436 days. 16 of the 19 active locks had a median wait under an hour. Three did not: Meldahl at 3.6 hours, Smithland at 2.2 and Olmsted at 3.8. Together they account for 7,047 waiting hours, 67% of the river's total.
Olmsted alone logged 4,388 hours, 42% of the river's waiting. One tow in ten waited there more than 18 hours. At Meldahl the figure was 9.5 hours, at Smithland 7.0. Olmsted opened in 2018, the newest lock on the river.
In the latest status report in this data, 9 tows were waiting at Olmsted, 6 at Meldahl and 3 at Smithland.
The last days are understated
Our daily counts for the river begin on 4 September. A tow still waiting when we collected the data has no lockage yet, so the longest recent waits are missing from these totals. The live lock pages, linked in the table, show each queue as it stands.
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.