Locks · Ohio River
Olmsted Locks and Dam: more barges than any other lock
5,301 barges passed through. Early September waits ran past 11 hours, and on 5 October the lock went to one chamber.
Olmsted Locks and Dam sits at mile 964.4 of the Ohio River, at Olmsted, Illinois. Between 4 September and 4 October 2026 it passed 5,301 barges, the most of the 173 locks with traffic in our archive. 572 commercial tows locked through, and the median one pushed 10 barges.
A slow start to September
The median commercial tow waited 3.8 hours from arrival to the start of its lockage, the 6th longest of 173 locks. Most of that came early. Weekly median waits were 11.4 hours in the week ending 6 September and 13.2 hours in the week ending 13 September. They fell to 1.8 hours the next week and stayed under 2 hours after that.
The drop came two weeks before our data ends, so censoring cannot explain all of it. The last week's 1.4 hours may still rise: a tow still waiting when we collected the data has no lockage yet.
Over the whole period, 71% of tows waited more than an hour and 25% more than twelve. One in ten waited longer than 18 hours. The longest wait was 110 hours, about four and a half days: the upbound Crystal D Taylor, pushing 14 barges, arrived on 11 September. Tows spent 4,388 hours waiting in all, about 183 days.
| Operator | Lockages | Hours waited |
|---|---|---|
| American Commercial Barge Lines | 65 | 398 |
| Ingram Barge | 52 | 399 |
| Kirby Inland Marine | 41 | 265 |
| Terral Riverservice | 27 | 293 |
One chamber until 13 November
The chamber is 1,200 by 110 feet, with a 12-foot lift. The lockmaster's notice reads: "Dam up, locking river chamber only. Oct 5 – Nov 13 we will be locking land chamber only."
At the last status report, early on 5 October, nine tows were waiting, one was locking, and the Corps reported an active stall or stoppage. Its own four-hour average delay stood at 107 minutes. Since live status began on 4 October, up to 13 tows have waited at once. The live Olmsted page will show how the single-chamber period affects waits.
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.