Across 747 recreational lockages the median transit was 28 minutes
— 25 with nothing commercial in the way, 45 when a commercial vessel
takes your cycle.
From AIS. Commercial vessels do not queue — they take the
next opening, so one arriving while you wait goes in front of you.
Lock traffic this week
Every lockage the Corps has published over the last seven
days, one day at a time — pick the day with the buttons below.
Each block starts when the vessel arrived and is as tall as the
minutes it took to clear, so the gaps between them are your windows.
Recreational rows are grouped chamber loads, not individual boats —
the feed never counts hulls. Where boats in a load carried AIS, the block
says how many were seen (≥N) — a floor, since most have none.
A commercial block is one vessel, and vessels
occasionally share a lockage (4 of 1,164), so two blocks at the same minute
can be a single passage. The thin hatched bands are the Salmon Bay
railroad bridge, just west of the locks, down for a scheduled passenger
train — 43 ft closed, so a masted boat waits; drawn from the
timetable, not seen, and freight is not in it.
What this is
Commercial traffic is not the largest single influence on how long
you wait — but it is the only one above chance that you can see coming.
Chamber side and cycle position both matter in the archive and neither is
visible from a boat. Commercial is visible: it broadcasts identity, position
and hull size on AIS, and the Corps publishes every lockage afterwards.
So the forecast starts there. If nothing commercial is in your way
you are in the clear majority of lockages that run about 25 minutes — a majority that is about 62% at midday and 98% in the evening, and the verdict above says which. If something is,
you are in the 18% that run about 45. Recreational traffic is not forecast
directly: it is too irregular to predict and the feed never counts it.