Zero-Queue Ports: No Anchored Ships, No Truck Lines Maritime Activity Reports, Inc. By Capt. Gajanan Karanjikar June 2, 2026 Copyright Adwo/AdobeStock From Congestion-as-Normal to Time-as-a-Service At the Port of the Future Conference in Houston, Texas, I had the privilege of speaking on a subject that, at first hearing, may sound radical, perhaps even impractical: “Zero-Queue Ports – No Anchored Ships and No Truck Lines.” Yet the packed room, the close attention of the audience, and the thoughtful discussion that followed confirmed something important. The maritime world is ready to challenge its old assumptions. It is ready to ask whether congestion, long treated as inevitable, is in fact a design failure. For too long, the global port community has accepted waiting as a normal condition of trade. A ship lying at anchorage for hours or days is often viewed as part of the commercial landscape. A line of trucks stretching outside a terminal gate is dismissed as a peak-hour inconvenience. Yard congestion, rail bottlenecks, and delayed berthing are folded into the language of “operational realities.” In truth, these are not merely routine inefficiencies. They are symptoms of a logistics architecture that has learned to absorb delay rather than prevent it. My central proposition in Houston was therefore straightforward: the port of the future must be designed on the principle that queues are unacceptable. Ships should not be compelled to act as floating warehouses at anchorage. Trucks should not be parked on public roads as extensions of terminal storage. Time should no longer be sacrificed because schedules, berths, gates, and inland logistics are managed in silos. Instead, the next generation of ports must be organised around precision of arrival, synchronization of operations, and the treatment of time itself as a service delivered to shipping, cargo, and the community. This is not a slogan. It is a design philosophy. The Congestion We Have Normalized In port operat