Suez Canal

The disruption stopped changing, so it stopped being news

Suez traffic did not taper. It fell in the first weeks of 2024 and then held. Against the 2019–2023 baseline the canal runs about a third below normal; against the last twelve months it is flat.

That pairing is the whole story of this route, and it is why the page reports both numbers. A reader shown only the trailing year would conclude nothing is wrong. A reader shown only the baseline would assume something is still deteriorating. Neither is true: the fall happened, and the new level has become the ordinary one.

Where the traffic went

Ships did not stop sailing. Most of what left the Red Sea corridor went around Africa instead, and the Cape of Good Hope has carried roughly double its baseline ever since. Total transits across the world’s chokepoints barely moved — which is why counting them finds nothing, and why the Route Displacement Index measures redistribution rather than volume.

The southern leg of the same corridor is Bab el-Mandeb, where the diversion begins.

What this page is not

A transit count is not a delay, a cost, or a queue. It counts vessels that passed, not vessels waiting at anchor or the freight rates charged to those that did. Congestion is invisible here.