Mainly on the Elbe River - Central Europe

2 ANALYSIS OF THE CURRENT STATE
2.1 GENERAL SITUATION
Inland waterway transport is an important transport mode, which allows improving and ensuring
sustainable European transportation system. Due to growing volumes of transported commodities,
the land traffic routes (roads, railways) are facing increased congestions associated with time
losses and resulting in environmental issues. There are 35.000 km of inland waterways in the
European Union and the network is densest in Western Europe.
Thanks to the possibility to transport oversized items, to the high safety level (the lowest
accident rate), to low transport costs and to environmental friendly operation, the river transport is
a strong competitor to road and railway transport. In addition, inland water transport offers the
possibility to serve as a valuable part of the combined transportation and the logistic chain. The
main commodities currently transported by inland waterways are mainly bulk materials, animal
feeds, fertilizers, grain, ore and scrap metal, solid and liquid fuels and container transportation is
on the rise as well.
The foreseen trend for the inland waterway transport shows constant growth. According to the
study TEN-STAC, increase in transported volumes will be by 2,5 % in national and 3,4 % in
international transport until the year 2020. The report on European waterway transport 2002
predicts rise in performance (tons-km) by 2 % per year until 2015.
2.2 THE ELBE WATERWAY
The Elbe is one of the largest rivers in Europe. It rises in the Czech Republic, flows through
Germany and empties into the North Sea. The total length of the Elbe river route is 1.154 km with a
river-basin area of 144.055 km 2 . The Elbe waterway offers great potential for transportation under
the condition of the whole year economical operation of cruises. The Elbe waterway is a part of the
IV. Trans-European multimodal corridor and is marked as waterway E20 by the AGN agreement
(European Agreement on Main Inland Waterways of International Importance), which defines the
European waterway network of international importance and the commitment to abide by given
parameters in the development of waterways. The AGN Agreement was approved in Geneva on
19 th January 1996, became effective by its article 8, paragraph 2, on 26 th July 1999. The AGN
Agreement provides following characteristics and criteria of waterways and of international ports:
Technical characteristics of waterways within the category E:
Evaluation of individual waterways distinguishes categories IV – VII with various characteristics
according to the following principles:
A feasibility study for “Improvement of Conditions for the River Transport in Central Europe (mainly on the Elbe
River)“ realized within the ChemLog project 9