# LA/Long Beach truck planning-time index Road congestion around LA/Long Beach: the FHWA truck planning-time index, a proxy for drayage conditions, not terminal turn time. Monthly. _Data through Jul 2026 · source last checked Sep 1, 2026 · page revised Aug 20, 2026_ > The LA/Long Beach truck planning-time index is 2.19 as of Jul 2026, below its trailing-12-month normal of 4.07. This is road congestion around the complex, a proxy for drayage conditions, not the terminal turn time a driver clocks gate to gate. The planning-time index is the ratio of a near-worst-case trip time to free-flow around the port, so a higher number means a wider window a drayage trip has to plan for. The FHWA publishes the planning-time index about two months behind, so July 2026 is the latest reading, not the current week. The LA/Long Beach truck planning-time index fell to 2.19 in July, down 45.4% year over year and well below its trailing-12-month normal of 4.07. Road conditions around the complex have eased materially, requiring less planning margin on drayage moves. The FHWA publishes the index about two months behind, so July is the latest available. ## Period moves and the seasonal vs-N-yr median (a prior-years comparison). The card verdict and the friction board use each series' trailing-12-month median, the friction rule. | Period | Current | Prior | Change | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Month over month | 2.19 | 2.24 | -2.2% | | Year over year | 2.19 | 4.01 | -45.4% | | vs 5-yr median | 2.19 | 3.88 | -43.6% | ## About LA/Long Beach truck planning-time index The truck planning-time index around LA/Long Beach measures how much longer a drayage trip near the terminals takes relative to free-flow conditions, published monthly by the FHWA. It is a road-congestion signal around the complex, a proxy for dray conditions: it says nothing about ships or boxes, and it is not the terminal truck turn time, the gate-to-gate minutes a driver actually spends inside the terminal that drayage and BCO readers quote. Turn times are the number the harbor trucking trade watches most, but HTA and PMSA publish them as monthly write-ups rather than a clean public data feed, so we do not carry them and use the FHWA planning-time index as the public, consistent proxy instead. A value of 1.0 would be free-flow; the numbers here are the buffer a trucker has to plan for. The FHWA releases it about two months after the month it covers, so the reading here is always the latest month available rather than a live figure. ## About this data - Source: FHWA National Performance Management Research Data Set, via BTS - Series: Truck planning-time index - Basis: Road congestion proxy, not terminal turn time - Geography: LA/Long Beach - Unit: PTI - Calculation period: Monthly, published about two months behind - Last observation: Jul 2026 - Update frequency: Monthly --- Cite: The truck planning-time index around LA/Long Beach is 2.19 as of Jul 2026 (FHWA, via BTS; 1.0 is free-flow). The Dwell. https://the-dwell.com/pti/la-long-beach Canonical URL: https://the-dwell.com/pti/la-long-beach