On Wednesday, the Port Authority for New York and New Jersey announced 2022 saw the highest cargo activity on record, with a 27 percent growth over its pre-pandemic activity.
In its reports for December 2022 and the full 2022 year, the port authority announced the port moved a record 9.5 million TEUs (twenty-foot equivalent units) in 2022, making it the busiest container port during the peak months of the holiday shipping season in the country. In December alone, the port handled 613,011 TEUs, a 3.6 increase over December 2019. Monthly cargo volume fell 15.2 percent when comparing December to November 2022, when the seaport handled 723,069 TEUs.
The port authority also reported that passenger levels at its airports were almost back to pre-pandemic levels. The port authority said it handled 11.4 million passengers in December, up 2 percent over the previous month. Annual passenger volume totaled 128.1 million passengers, about 91 percent of 2019’s levels, which had at the time been a record-high year for travel with 140.5 million passengers.
The port authority said its four bridges and two tunnels handled a total of 10.2 million eastbound vehicles during December 2022, just shy of 2019’s 10.3 million vehicles. For the year, the bridges and tunnels handled a total of 120.7 million eastbound vehicles. Of those, truck traffic increased by 6.7 percent compared to 2019 totals, the port authority said.
The Port Authority Trans-Hudson Corporation, or PATH, recorded 3.7 million total riders in December 2022, 57 percent of pre-pandemic numbers, and 42.6 million riders for the year, or 52 percent of pre-pandemic ridership levels.