Major Waterway-Improvement Projects Eyed Overseas

Waterways Journal
23 May 2011
By David Murray

In recent weeks. leaders of China, France. and Turkey have all announced major projects and boosts to waterways spending. All three countries have histories in which inland waterways have played important parts in establishing their presence in world trading networks.

China Doubles Investments

In March, China's Ministry of Transport announced it intended to double its investment on waterways construction, to 200 billion yuan (about $30.5 billion) over the next five years. The central government will fund about one fifth of the total investment, or 4.5 billion yuan, with the rest coming from local governments or agencies, according to the Chinese news outlet Xinhuia.

The project's goal is to increase the average cargo weight carried by inland vessels to 800 tons, an 80 percent increase from 2010. Many of China's river and waterway cargo carriers are small "mom and pop" operations in which a husband and wife live on their vessel full-time. China does have towboats pushing tows on its larger rivers, including some supplied by American boat-builders.

China's State Council, its equivalent of a cabinet, announced a goal of increasing the country's total inland freight volume to 3 billion tons by the end of 2020. Its volume in 2010 totaled 1.7 billion tons, according to Ministry of Transport figures.

China has one of the world's oldest traditions of inland waterway transport. Its Grand Canal, built to carry grain supplies, is the world's longest artificial waterway. Built in stages over many centuries and running from Hangzhou in the south to Beijing in the north, it has sections that date back to the 5th century B.C.

French `Supercanal'

France's prime minister, Nicolas Sarkozy, finally committed to a massive canal project that had been talked about for decades. On April 10, Sarkozy announced that France would spend about 4.5 billion Euros (about $6.5 billion at current exchange rates) to build a 66-mile,
long "supercanal" linking Paris waterways to a canal network in northern France and the Low Countries.

The canal, called the Seine-Scheldt Link or the Seine-Nord Europe Canal, is estimated to be completed by 2016 and to take 500,000 trucks off the roads when it is finished.

"This project will put Paris at the heart of Europe," Sarkozy said April 6.

It will connect the French canal network to 12,500 miles of canals and waterways in northern Europe's Rhine-Scheldt network. Among its other benefits, the canal will help France comply with European environmental regulations on truck emissions. High oil prices are also driving the project.

Water freight in France has increased 6 percent since 2007, while truck traffic fell 17 percent in the same period, according to Britain's Daily Mail. The new canal is expected to double the amount of water freight in France from its current one-twentieth of all cargo movements. The French government's stated goal is to reduce truck traffic by 25 percent by 2020.

The canal will be one of Europe's biggest engineering projects, employing up to 25,000 people over its life. It will measure 177 feet wide and will include four new inland ports, seven locks, 57 road bridges, two rail bridges, and three bridges to carry the canal itself.

The project will be cost-shared, with about 900 million euros coming from France, the European Union pitching in 333 million, French ports contributing 106 million euros; local towns and regions will pay for the rest.

The project will connect Compiegne with Cambrai. Since it will cross some World War I battlefields, project leaders had to submit written assurances that cemeteries will not be disturbed.

France was once a world leader in canals, building hundreds of miles in the 17th and 18th centuries under royal patronage. In fact, a 19th-century canal already links the Seine basin to Dunkirk in the north, but it is too narrow for modern commercial watercraft. No new canals have been built in France since World War II.

About 40 percent of Europe's canal and waterway commercial traffic consists of container barges. According to the Port of Antwerp's Web site, one-third of all its barge traffic now consists of container barges, and the percentage is growing.

"The importance of large, modern container barges cannot be over-emphasized," according to the site.

Turkish Canal Plan

On April 27, Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erodogan announced plans to build a new canal paralleling the Bosporus, the historic waterway running through central Istanbul that connects the Sea of Marmara with the Black Sea.

Erdogan made the plan a centerpiece of his Islamic and Development Party's campaign for a third term in power. Erdogan called the plan a "crazy and magnificent" idea. Turkey's deputy prime minister compared it to the "crazy" idea of transporting naval vessels overland — which the Ottoman Turks did in 1453 when they conquered the city then named Constantinople, which had rebuffed all previous
attacks and was considered impregnable.

Erdogan said the new canal is a safety necessity. The 20-mile-long Bosporus, with 12 turns, is increasingly congested with about 150 vessels per day. Some of them are tankers carrying hazardous chemical cargoes. The Bosporus is only 1,000 yards wide at some points. Although it is deep, its treacherous currents can cause problems.

There have been many accidents on the past few decades. In 1994, a collision of two ships killed 29 seamen and spilled 100,000 barrels of oil into the waterway, closing it for a week. Centuries of construction have left the shoreline crowded with buildings. (At the southern end of the Sea of Marmara, another passage, the Dardanelles, connects with the Mediterranean, but it is wider and less treacherous, and its shorelines are less densely populated.)

The new canal, at 28 to 30 miles long, would be longer than either the Suez or Panama canals. It would transit land southwest of Istanbul that is less densely populated. Plans call for the canal to be 500 feet wide. Two new towns would have to be built to support it.

One question raised by the canal plan has to do with an international treaty Turkey signed in 1936 that governs usage of the Bosporus. The Montreux Convention requires Turkey to allow commercial vessels through the straits. Some in Turkey, including its former transportation minister, argue that the treaty covers only non-hazardous cargoes. Under the treaty's terms, Turkey could not force anyone to use a new canal. But Binali Yildirim, a legislator from Erdogan's party, has argued that because the Bosporus is so crowded, ships that lose a collective $1.4 billion a year from delays might have an economic incentive to use a faster, safer waterway,
the Washington Post reported.

Erdogan has not put forth details of how the new canal would be financed, but has suggested a combination of foreign and domestic investment. Some analysts have said toll fees would have to be charged to recover construction costs.

Kemal Kilicdaroglu, leader of the rival Republican People's Party, dismissed the canal idea as just a way to make supporters of Erdogan's party rich. Polling indicates Erdogan's party is likely to prevail at the polls.