Europe's most important international waterway. Transport of foreign Europe

Rivers are not only objects of nature (beautiful, cozy), but also very convenient and, compared to other cheap ways of transporting goods. After several decades of fascination with autobahns and fast rail, Western Europe is returning to water transport.

The reason is simple - security environment and reducing transport costs. After all, one ship takes on board the same amount of goods as 50-60 trucks. Therefore, it is not surprising that in the latest documents defining EU priorities in the field of transport for the coming years, special attention was paid to water transport.
These trends cannot but affect Ukraine, which can only win in the wake of Brussels' new approaches to river transport. Ukraine is very conveniently located on the map of European waterways. Thus, the Danube and the Dnieper are recognized as waterways of trans-European significance. A lot of space is devoted to the issues of modernization of the Ukrainian system of water transport and water resources management in the Ukraine-EU Association Agreement. And here, perhaps, the most important thing is the development of river transport on the Dnieper and the creation of the E-70 waterway Black Sea-Dnieper-Pripyat-Western Europe. This would significantly reduce the energy dependence of the Ukrainian economy.
"Green" transport
What explains such close attention to water transport? River navigation solves several key problems for Europe at the same time. First, funds. During the crisis, everyone is looking for an opportunity to save money, and the cost of transporting a ton of cargo by ship is more than ten times lower than for road transport. However, the disadvantage is a somewhat longer transport time, which excludes the transport of goods by river, which must be immediately delivered to the client. However, the low cost of transportation is so important factor that now on the Rhine, Seine or Danube there are ships not only with coal and crushed stone, but also with containers, cars, etc.
Secondly, it is already mentioned ecology. In recent years, the European Union has adopted very strict criteria for emissions of carbon dioxide, dust and harmful substances, as well as the volume level. But in times of crisis, Europe is in no hurry to make serious investments, for example, in renewable energy, and somehow it is not appropriate to abandon the proclaimed standards. So, transport still has the greatest reserves to achieve these eco-standards. We are talking about more and more new restrictions on road transport (traffic ban in city centers for trucks, new fees and taxes, stricter safety and hygiene standards for drivers) and at the same time about the provision of preferences for rail and river and sea transport.
Third, countering the negative effects of excessive motorization. In the context of Ukraine, the words about the excessive number of autobahns sound strange, but the Germans or the Netherlands are not at all laughing. In West Germany, the Netherlands or Belgium, the density of autobahns exceeds all limits of common sense, but even if every free plot of land there is concreted, this still will not solve the problem. Seaports in Hamburg, Antwerp or Amsterdam suffer from traffic jams at the exit from them - the throughput of the port roads and railways is limited, and there is physically nowhere to build new ones. The optimal solution is precisely the transshipment of goods in the board-to-board format, from a sea vessel to a river vessel, and the export of cargo by water further to Europe.
Due to the specifics of river transport, it is not very suitable for short transportation, except, for example, for the transportation of building materials, in particular sand. To take full advantage of its advantages, it is necessary to create a continuous network of full-fledged waterways that would cover the whole of Europe and even the Caspian Sea region. This is precisely what the unified European transport network TEN-T and the AGN convention on international waterways serve, in which a lot of space is also given to Ukraine and Belarus.

First of all, the Danube
After the end of the Balkan wars and the entry of Slovakia, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria into the EU, there is an increase in the importance of the Danube - the largest European river after the Volga. Moreover, in the coming years, almost all Danube countries (except Ukraine and Moldova) will be part of the EU, which will significantly improve economic cooperation within the Danube region.
If you look at the Danube in Bratislava, Vienna or Budapest, you get the impression that we are standing in front of a waterway. The Danube transports not only coal, sand and other low-value goods, but also containers, cars, etc. Even passenger transport is developed, although it would seem that the river here has forever lost the competition with buses and the railway.
For example: high-speed passenger ships run between Bratislava and Vienna several times a day, covering this distance in an hour and a half. This is only half an hour longer than by train, but taking into account the fact that the ship carries passengers from the center to the center of the capital (the railway stations are located a little further), then in the final account it turns out even faster. Thus, water transport is used not only by tourists, but also by businessmen or people who live in one capital and work in another (in the Vienna-Bratislava duopolis, this is a fairly common lifestyle).
An important advantage of the Danube is that the main economic centers of this region are located on it, in particular the capitals of states - Bratislava, Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade. Each of these cities (and many others) has powerful river ports and multimodal logistics centers. The importance of this river artery increased after the opening of the Rhine-Main-Danube canal in 1992, connecting the Danube region (and thus southwestern Ukraine) with the leading seaports of the North Sea. Now on the agenda is the creation of two new canals in the Czech Republic and Slovakia: the Danube-Odra-Elba and the Danube-Vah-Odra. They will be built in about ten years, which will create a promising waterway between the Black and Baltic Seas.

Water transport for energy saving
For Ukraine, the development of waterways is of strategic importance, taking into account European integration aspirations and the issue of energy security. The key problem is the creation of the trans-European waterway E-40 Dnieper-Pripyat-Vistula. This path would make it possible to translate big share cargo traffic that moves in the directions East-West (Poland-Ukraine-Russia) and North-South (Baltic ports-Black Sea ports), from roads to environmentally friendly and energy-saving water transport. And this, in turn, would help reduce the cost by reducing the energy intensity of the Ukrainian economy and strengthening energy independence. The transfer of cargo flows from roads to waterways is also one of the best ways reduce the emission of carbon dioxide and harmful substances, which is of great importance in the process of Ukraine's integration with the EU.
To say that Kyiv does not want to develop river transport would be unfair. In particular, in 2009, after many years of negotiations, Ukraine joined the European Agreement on International Waterways (AGN), assuming obligations regarding the Danube, Dnieper and Pripyat (these rivers are part of the international waterways specified in the agreement). The issue of water transport was actively discussed at the negotiations on the Ukraine-EU Association Agreement. And here we also managed to establish constructive cooperation. During these negotiations, Kyiv committed to a series of important reforms in the water transport industry, with which today it is in no hurry. And the development of stable legislation, a clear distribution of the powers of individual bodies and the introduction of transparent rules for establishing fees and taxes for the use of waterways in general and locks in particular are by far the most sensitive issues.
Despite the outdated infrastructure of locks and ports, in general, the navigational parameters of the Dnieper meet the standards of the international waterway specified in the AGN agreement (unlike Poland, where large investments are needed). There are no problems at all with the Belarusian section of the E-40 route (the Pripyat River, the Dnieper-Bug Canal): recently they have invested quite big money in the modernization of water transport infrastructure. The only problem is Poland, one of the few countries in Europe that has not yet signed the AGN convention and is in no hurry to develop shipping on its E-40 section, that is, on the Vistula and the Bug.
A paradoxical situation: Kyiv is still fulfilling (albeit slowly and inconsistently) European recommendations on the development of water transport and Ukraine's participation in the single European transport network TEN-T. However, an obstacle to the integration of the Ukrainian transport system with the European one is Poland, which positions itself as an advocate for Ukrainian interests in the European Union. Until Poland signs the AGN and fulfills its obligations regarding the E-40 waterway, the Dnieper and Pripyat will remain a waterway to nowhere (sorry, only to Brest), instead of uniting Ukraine with the West. It is worth reminding this to partners from Warsaw and Brussels when they talk about slowing down the European integration process only from the Ukrainian side.

G. OSTROUMOV, special correspondent of the magazine.

Until recently in Western Europe there were two large disconnected river systems that served to transport goods. The basis of one of them - the northwestern one - was formed by the rivers Main and Rhine. The basis of the second - southeast - the Danube. Two years ago, Germany connected the Danube with the Main, and thus, a single Western European water transport system was obtained. And now, if Russia is added to this system with its developed network of rivers and canals, then a pan-European waterway will be formed, including the North, Black and Baltic Seas. In recent years, Russian shipbuilders have designed and built a new type of vessel that promises a revolution in water transport, primarily due to its ability to move through water with a load of one to five thousand tons at the speed of a car.

The recently commissioned Danube - Main Canal connected the most ancient cultural centers of Europe: Vienna, the capital of Austria, and Frankfurt am Main, which is often called the financial capital of Germany.

Frankfurt am Main is one of the most important canal ports.

Map-scheme of the "European circumnavigation". Where the path passes through the sea, it is marked with a double line.

Scheme of the "European circumnavigation". It can be used to determine the length of any route and the possible carrying capacity of ships.

Plan of the canal connecting the Danube with the Main. Distances are measured from Main (in kilometers). Legend:< - шлюз.

Channel profile - vertical section. The numbers at the locks show the height above sea level (in meters). On the right - a cross section of the canal bed (dimensions in meters).

The project of the Russian large high-speed auto-passenger ferry. It is designed for 600 passengers and 200 cars. The length of the vessel is 108 meters. Speed ​​- 54 knots, which is more than 100 kilometers per hour. Crew - 12 people. General form ship and its section along the axis.

Power consumption per ton of payload versus speed.

Fuel consumption per ton-mile of payload as a function of travel speed.

Into the past - upstream

And where do you get ore from Luxembourg? I asked, knowing that there were no such ores near Hamburg.

From Sweden, by sea we bring concentrate - pellets.

Isn't it expensive?

Oh no! The road by water is the most profitable. It is cheaper for us to send a cargo ship around the Earth than to send the same weight by rail from Luxembourg to Hamburg, - followed the answer.

Maybe the Hamburg engineer intercepted a little, but in economic terms, the waterway is really the cheapest. People understood this even thousands of years ago, for example, in China, in Egypt.

The oldest navigable canals in China were laid more than four thousand years ago, and in a very original way: the canal ran parallel to the river in artificial embankments. So it was possible to avoid rapids, rapids, wetlands. The locks were of a special design, they were inclined wooden shields, along which an artel of workers numbering 16-20 people pulled barges on ropes to the headwaters. Also, the ship was held on the ropes when it slid down the inclined plane.

In Egypt, in the second millennium BC, a canal was built connecting the Nile with the construction site of the pyramids. From the other side of the river, blocks of limestone were transported, from which the "body" of the pyramid was built. And stone blocks for cladding, cut down thousands of kilometers in Aswan, were delivered along the river to its lower reaches, where construction was underway. Then, along artificial channels, they were brought almost to the very place of laying. For 1600 years BC. e. Pharaoh Sesostris planned to connect the eastern arm of the Nile Delta with a canal to the Red Sea. Through this sea, Egypt received many goods from Arabia, in particular aromatic wood, the fragrant smoke from which was an indispensable part of religious rites. The ancient Greek historian Herodotus, who visited Egypt in the 5th century BC, already tells about five channels between the Nile and the Red Sea. He also talks about two artificial and five natural channels in the Nile Delta. The Romans made a shorter waterway from the Danube to the sea.

European countries, at a time when there were no railways, vigorously developed water transport. Holland and Belgium were the first to build such a dense network of canals that waterways entered almost every major city, every region of the country. Many canals were built by the Italian republics. The French got involved in this work somewhat later. But today almost all the big rivers of France are connected by canals.

The scale of all these works is still surprising: the canal between the Rhine and Rhone has 315 kilometers in length and 172 locks. The Languedoc Canal stretches for 244 kilometers and is equipped with 100 locks. It and further the Garonka river connected the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean. At the end of the last century in France, the total length of waterways was 12,778 kilometers.

The advent of steam traction cooled interest in canals both in Europe and around the world. Many railroad companies began to buy up existing waterways and render them unusable. So steam traction fought with its competitor! But he was not so easy to deal with: what can you oppose to such a powerful argument - a lower price for services? And the channels survived. Here is a good example. Once I happened to walk along the highway in the vicinity of Birmingham in the evening. On one side of the road there were fields, on the other - dense and tall shrubs stretched. The sound of a motor was heard. I looked around - is a car catching up with me? No, the highway behind me was empty. And the noise of the engine was getting closer. It seemed to come from the bushes. I parted them and found myself on the bank of the canal. A self-propelled barge sailed past me. With its sides, it almost touched the shores. But the channel was so straight that the helmsman, apparently, was not afraid to crash into the shore. At the hotel, on the map, I learned that it is called the "Grand Union Canal" and leads to Birmingham. And next to the canal winds the river Avon.

In Eastern Europe, in Russia, as early as the 18th century, the construction of canals began to connect rivers belonging to different basins. Even earlier, in the times of Kievan Rus, many of our rivers were also interconnected, but by overland routes - portages. The ships were dragged from river to river on the grass, on the ground. This was facilitated by a rather flat relief: the levels of the connected rivers were almost the same. The memory of such crossings is preserved in the names of cities: Volokolamsk, Vyshny Volochek...

Part of the artificial waterways in Russia was laid out in order to navigate ships not on stormy lakes, like Onega, but on the quiet waters of bypass channels. In total, more than three dozen canals and water systems were built in Russia until 1917. Now in our country there are 145,000 kilometers of equipped waterways. Significantly more than in Western Europe. But, of course, we must take into account that there are the Alps, the Carpathians, the Tatras, the Apennines, the Pyrenees, the Ardennes. And in the European part of Russia there are no large hills that make it necessary to build high, which means expensive gateway stairs.

Charlemagne project completed

In the countries of Western Europe, many rivers connected by canals (or, as experts say, an extensive transport infrastructure), have long contributed to the development of crafts and trade. Already in the 11th century, small corporations of merchants began to arise, and by the 14th century these groups united into one powerful union - the Hanseatic Union. It included up to a hundred European cities - German, Scandinavian, Baltic. And even Veliky Novgorod was part of it. The political center of the union was the German city of Lübeck.

Sometimes you can hear the judgment that "Hanse" is a union of sea, port cities. In fact, the Hansa included many cities far from the seas. They brought their goods to the ports on huge wagons or along river channels. Only Spain and England were not part of the Hanseatic League.

But long before the formation of the Hanseatic League, in the 8th century, a grandiose plan was born at the court of the Frankish king Charlemagne: to connect the Danube and the Rhine with a canal. It was a dream of creating a unified water transport system, practically useful for the whole of Europe. The Frankish empire of Charlemagne was huge. It stretched from the Baltic Sea to Southern Italy, from the Atlantic to the Carpathians. The bold idea to connect the Rhine and Danube, as the documents say, was born in 793. By boldness of thought, by the ability to see the prospects for the development of the needs of countries and peoples, this plan can be compared with plans for the construction of the Suez or Panama Canals. A short waterway opens up most of Europe for free navigation of river vessels: northwest and southeast.

The task of the possibilities of the VIII century seemed impossible. From the Danube it was necessary to raise the water by 67.8 meters (according to the latest measurements), and from the Main - by 175.15 meters, the distance between the rivers was 171 kilometers. Nevertheless, there is evidence that at the same time, in the VIII century, they began to dig a canal. The attempt was unsuccessful, and then resumed several more times: the opportunity to have a single waterway in Europe promised very great benefits.

Only many centuries later, in the 30s of the 19th century, during the reign of the Bavarian king Ludwig I, the idea of ​​building was resurrected again. It took nine years to design. In 1846 the Danube and the Rhine (via the Main) were connected by a canal. It was called "Ludwig-Danube-Canal".

As soon as the operation of this structure began, it became obvious that the new waterway was too small and cramped to solve the tasks assigned to it. During the Second World War, the canal was damaged, but it was still used little by little until 1950.

The urgent need to have a water infrastructure connecting the northwest of Europe with its southeast, adjacent to the Black Sea, began to grow again. Despite the fact that aircraft have appeared that can carry hundreds of tons of cargo over thousands of kilometers in a matter of hours, despite the speed of modern railways, and the rapid development of road transport, river vessels do not give up their positions. Although the shortcomings of the river fleet remain the same: low-speed, strict requirements for the fairway (fear of shallows), inability to withstand strong waves, the inevitability of multiple transshipments of goods. But the low cost of water transport still covers all these disadvantages.

To transport cargo, water transport requires ten times less power than, for example, a car. There is less fuel consumption, and the cost of arranging the path is also much lower. If we compare the cost of a thousand kilometers of railway and the funds required to equip the river for navigation (the same thousand kilometers) - to build piers, port mechanisms, warehouses, install buoys and other fairway indicators, it turns out that the arrangement of the river route costs 8- 10 times cheaper.

Unfortunately, Russia and better days our economy did not really care about the development of river transport. In Western Europe, river routes are much shorter than Russian ones, and the network of roads is incomparably denser than ours. And yet there, river transport transports five times more cargo than in Russia. The United States surpasses us in this sense by more than four times. In Germany, according to forecasts for 2010, an increase in various types of transport within the country is envisaged: by road freight - by 95 percent, by rail - by 55 percent, by water - by 84 percent.

The Danube-Main Canal began to be built back in the 70s. (It must be said that the new building did not use anything left from the Ludwig-Danube Canal that once passed here.) By the fall of 1992, the canal's work was completed. A difficult period of development began. The total length - from the Danube to the Main - 171 kilometers. Four locks on the Danube side lift ships, and 12 locks lower them into the Main. The locks can accept self-propelled barges 85 meters long, 9.5 meters wide with a draft of 2.5 meters. This corresponds to a load capacity of 1350 tons. It is also possible to push a non-motorized barge. Then its carrying capacity will increase to 3500 tons.

According to calculations, in 2000, when the Danube-Main canal is fully developed, the port of Nuremberg will be able to receive 8.5 million tons of cargo from the Main, and 5.7 million tons from the Danube. Already now the channel is used by several European countries - the Netherlands, Germany, Belgium, Austria and a number of others.

The competition continues

The construction of the Danube-Main canal not only united the waterways of Western Europe, but actually connected all Russian, Belarusian, Moldovan, and Ukrainian water transport systems to them.

The new system, born thanks to the efforts of Germany, is a ring with many "offshoots" - these are navigable rivers flowing into the main highway. The circumference of the ring, stretching from the middle of Western Europe to the Volga, is 4,500 kilometers.

In Soviet times, many shipping channels were laid in Russia, which gave us the right to call Moscow "the port of five seas." The collapse of the USSR into a number of independent states - the former Soviet republics - greatly constrained the maneuverability of the sea and river fleets of the former USSR.

In the current economic situation, production is especially interested in accelerating the turnover of funds invested in the manufacture of products. In particular, it is extremely important for factories to deliver their products to the customer as quickly as possible. finished products and, in turn, receive components and assemblies. Therefore, they prefer a car and even an airplane, ignoring such a slow-moving boat as a river boat. This is probably why in Russia at present 82 percent of barges are used only for transporting sand and gravel. These goods are not urgent and can wait for a buyer at the port warehouse for months.

But not always, hopefully, it will be so. And here, by the way, something new that has recently appeared in the Russian technology of the river fleet will come in handy.

In recent decades, our shipbuilding has been replenished with several magnificent innovations - hydrofoils, hovercraft and ekranoplanes. The credit for this belongs mainly to the Nizhny Novgorod and St. Petersburg shipbuilders. Since the 80s, Nizhny Novgorod shipbuilders have been intensively working in the field of river-sea vessels with increased speeds progress and better economic performance.

The creation of modern types of high-speed vessels is based on the use of a new principle of movement - the movement of a vessel in an air cavity under the bottom.

The main point here is the following. An artificial air cavity is created under the bottom of the vessel (an air cavity of a special profile), into which air is injected under excess pressure. This air layer isolates most of the bottom from contact with water, therefore, the resistance to movement is reduced. Air is injected under the bottom in its bow, and exits from under the vessel (if the cavity is organized correctly) only in its stern. Special contours or fences running around the hull prevent air from escaping from the cavity in the bow or along the sides.

The energy costs for air supply for the formation of a cavity are from one and a half to three percent of the total capacity of the ship's main power plant. But at this expense, the resistance of water to its movement is very significantly reduced.

On the basis of the principle of movement in an air cavity, domestic ships have already been created. They are fast, in ideal conditions their speed reaches 50 knots (almost 100 kilometers) per hour. Such a vessel is capable of covering the distance from Moscow to Nuremberg or Cologne in a day. So land transport again has a serious competitor, given the lower cost of water transport.

The principle of air cavity movement has been extensively studied on large-scale models and tested on operating ships. open Joint-Stock Company"Central Design Bureau for hydrofoils named after R. E. Alekseev" has created: a seventy-seat passenger ship "Linda", which develops a speed of up to 30 knots; sea ​​cargo ship "Serna" with a displacement of 100 tons and a carrying capacity of 45-50 tons with a speed of 30 knots; marine patrol boat "Mercury" with a displacement of 100 tons and a speed of 50 knots.

The construction of all these ships is now being carried out in series at shipyards in Russia. At the same time, other, more powerful vessels are being created in the air cavity under the bottom. These will be single-hull ships, catamarans, and high-speed cargo ships capable of carrying cargo weighing from 2,000 to 5,000 tons.

High speed, low draft and a significant reduction in the wave created by the movement of the ship (and this is a very important circumstance, since the banks of the canals suffer from erosion by a large wave), will allow the new type of ships to be widely used in the European water ring system. It can be thought that they will create serious competition for land and air transport.

Academician O. Bogomolov, head of the Institute for International Economic and Political Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, writes in connection with the commissioning of the Danube-Rhine Canal: "Analysis shows that there is a real opportunity to "circle" not only rivers and seas, but also a whole economic decisions."

The cooperation of German and Russian specialists in the development of the European water ring with new means of transport will serve as an excellent example for many branches of the economy and technology.

The author and the editors express sincere gratitude to the German Embassy in Russia and JSC "Central Design Bureau for Hydrofoils named after R. E. Alekseev" for providing the materials on which this article is based.

The rivers of Foreign Europe are not the largest in the world; their length barely reaches 3000 km, but they have created an extensive shipping network. Even where there is no natural estuary, people dug channels, drained the sea to ensure the delivery of cargo far inland. Today, the water arteries of Europe play a key role in the development of the region.

Major water arteries

We list the largest rivers in Western Europe:

• Danube - 2850 km.
• Rhine - 2200 km.
• Elba (Laba) - 1140 km.
• Loire - 1010 km.
• Tahoe - 1010 km.

Rice. 1. Map of the rivers of Foreign Europe

All rivers from the above list perform a transport function. They carry thousands of tons of cargo and hundreds of passengers every day. In addition, navigable rivers are:

• Vistula;
• Audra;
• Ebro;
• Maas;
• Scheldt.

Danube

The Danube is a legendary river, the longest in Western Europe. The vast stretch has helped connect many states that do not have access to the sea. The sources are in the mountains in Germany, and the mouth is on the border of Romania and Ukraine. The river flows into the Black Sea.

Rice. 2 Danube

Ten states formed along the Danube. Four of the most beautiful capitals of Europe stand on the river: Vienna, Bratislava, Budapest and Belgrade. And the Romanian part of the river delta is even included in the UNESCO World Heritage List.

Rhine

The Rhine is considered an important connecting water system between Germany, France and Holland. The movement starts from a small city in Switzerland - Basel. With the rest of the main rivers of Europe, the Rhine is connected by canals. The mouth begins in the Netherlands and ends in the North Sea. It flows into the North Sea.

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Rice. 3. River Rhine on the map

Elbe

Another major river in Germany is the Elbe. However, it also flows in the Czech Republic, a little in Poland and Austria. Like the Rhine, it originates in the Alps and ends in the waters of the North Sea. The mouth is quite wide, so a port was founded there - the city of Hamburg.

Loire

It is the waterway of France. It originates in the Seven Heights and is a wide mountain river that crosses deep gorges and forms waterfalls of unprecedented beauty. On the flat territory it has a very wide flood, especially in the spring, from which settlements standing close to the river.

Tacho

Tahoe feeds the Iberian Peninsula. It is the main navigable river in Spain and Portugal. The upper course is a mountain river. At the mouth of the river is largest port in the Atlantic Ocean - Lisbon. It was from this place that navigators began their journey in the era of the Great Discoveries.

The most popular trips on the river are tourist cruises. Along the river, there are many ancient Spanish and Portuguese cities that have retained their medieval flavor.

Cities at the mouths of the rivers

• Rhine-Haringvliet, Rotterdam;
• Elbe - Hamburg;
• Laura - Saint-Nazaire;
• Tajo - Lisbon.

What have we learned?

All the major rivers of Western Europe play a key navigational role. They connect cities and countries with the oceans, allowing cheap transportation of goods deep into the continent. Among them the most significant are: Danube, Rhine, Laura, Elbe, Tahoe.

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The paths along rivers and lakes greatly facilitated the exploration and development of almost all continents; and to this day they continue to serve both for travel and commercial purposes. Although in different countries requirements for navigation are different, for the passage of vessels a depth of at least 1.2 m is required.

The cost of creating and operating waterways has long been a subject of debate among engineers, economists and politicians. Transportation by water is slower but cheaper than by rail or cars, unless the cost of maintaining the water route is included in the cost of transportation. It is the need for periodic dredging and other hydraulic engineering works that gives ground transportation an advantage. But even with this in mind, they prefer to transport large consignments of raw materials, such as coal or oil, ore or grain, by water.

The prevalence of waterways.

European rivers play an important role as waterways, due to the ease of communication and high population density in Europe. The Rhine, Danube and Volga have been in use for centuries. In the lowlands of central Europe, rivers and canals carry more goods than roads or railroads. An extensive network of canals unites the rivers here into a single water transport system. Channels have been built that allow ocean-going ships to enter ports such as Antwerp and Rotterdam. In Europe, mainly large consignments of heavy and voluminous raw materials are transported by water. Important waterways in other parts of the world include the Amazon River in South America, the Nile in Africa, and the Yangtze in Asia.

The United States has an extensive river network which, with regular hydraulic work, provides many shipping routes. The United States and Canada have the world's largest shipping traffic on the Great Lakes. From New England to Florida, the Connecticut, Hudson, Delaware, Potomac, James, Savannah, and other rivers, as well as the Delaware, Chesapeake, and other bays, provide river and coastal navigation. On the Pacific coast, excellent ports are established in the San Francisco Bay, as well as on the Sacramento, Columbia and Willamette rivers, in the Puget Sound and its river bays. However, more than half of the US inland waterway traffic comes from the Mississippi Basin and the Great Lakes. Hydraulic structures (canals, locks, dams, etc.) made almost the entire Mississippi and Ohio basin navigable. The Mississippi system is connected by rivers and canals of the Illinois system to Lake Michigan. The importance of the Great Lakes for transport increased after the completion in 1959 of a sea shipping route along the St. Lawrence River, which allowed ships with a large draft to leave the lakes into the Atlantic Ocean.

The network of canals in the states of New York and Illinois, as well as the Coastal Canal, which runs parallel to almost the entire coast of the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico, significantly increase the length of American waterways.

ocean routes.

Modern ocean liner routes tend to lay in arcs great circle of the globe that pass through the points of departure and arrival. So, although Yokohama is almost on the same parallel with San Francisco, the shortest route along the arc of a great circle passes to the north, near the Aleutian Islands. The shortest distance from New York to Liverpool (England) is near the Great Newfoundland Bank. Today, there are seven main ocean routes:

1. The busiest North Atlantic route connects the ports of the Atlantic coast of America from Canada to Florida with the ports of Western Europe.

2. The second busiest route passes through the Suez Canal. Here the paths converge from Europe, from the Atlantic coast of North and Central America to East Africa, India and other countries of South and Southeast Asia. The shortest route from Europe to Australia, China and Japan also passes through the Suez Canal; however, routes to this part of the globe from the East Coast of the United States and from the Caribbean are shorter via the Panama Canal. Until now, many cargo routes between Western Europe and Australia pass around the Cape of Good Hope. The route through the Suez Canal is 1600 km shorter, but due to the high cost of passage through the canal, the longer route is cheaper. In addition, the largest ships cannot pass through the Suez Canal.

3. The third busiest route is the route through the Panama Canal. This route noticeably shortens the route from the ports of the east coast of the United States and Western Europe to the west coast of North and South America. From New York to San Francisco through the Strait of Magellan, the distance is 21,134 km, and through the Panama Canal 8,467 km. From New York to Valparaiso in Chile through the Strait of Magellan 13,483 km, and through the Panama Canal 7020 km. The distance from Liverpool to Valparaiso across the canal is shorter by 2478 km. The line of equal distances from New York through the Suez and Panama Canals passes near Hong Kong and Manila, and from England - east of Australia and Japan. Thus, routes through the Suez Canal from Europe to all Asian countries and Australia are shorter.

4. West African routes connect the Atlantic ports of Europe and both Americas with the western and southeastern coasts of Africa. This is a short route from the Atlantic shores of North and South America, as well as the north and west of Europe to Australia and New Zealand. Supertankers with oil from the countries of the Middle East to Europe follow the same route.

5. South American routes connect Europe and the US Atlantic coast with Brazil, Uruguay and Argentina. The significance of this route is growing due to the increase in cargo turnover with these South American countries.

6. North Pacific routes link the Pacific coast of the United States and Canada with Japan and China. Most of these routes are in great circles near the Aleutian Islands, but some passenger and cargo ships call at Honolulu, which increases the distance, for example, from San Francisco to Yokohama by 1600 km.

7. In the South Pacific, there are two routes of interest to the US: one through Honolulu, Samoa, and the Fiji Islands, and the other through Tahiti and the Society Islands. Both routes link the US Pacific coast with New Zealand and Australia, as well as, through the Panama Canal, the North Atlantic countries with Australia and the islands of the South Pacific.

Types of ships.

Most of the ships are designed in accordance with the requirements of navigation (mode of navigation) and for a certain type of cargo. Some riverboats are intended for passengers only, more ships are used for the transport of passengers and cargo (cargo-passenger), but the bulk of the ships are specialized in the transport of goods. There are four main types of sea vessels: 1) cargo ships (dry cargo, tankers, combined, etc.) that carry out individual orders or operate on regular routes; 2) cargo-passenger ships; 3) high-speed passenger liners with two or three classes for passengers, as well as post and luggage compartments; 4) a small number of comfortable high-speed vessels designed only for passengers and mail.

Foreign Europe occupies a prominent place in the global cargo and passenger turnover. Its regional transport system is a complex interweaving of almost all types of transport routes. It is customary to refer to its characteristic features: the complexity of the configuration, a very high density of the network, a large share of mixed traffic, and the widespread development of transit traffic. Until the early 1990s, when the integration processes in the western and eastern parts of Europe proceeded largely in isolation from each other, the development of transport also led to the formation of two almost independent concentrations - the western (capitalist) and eastern (socialist), although, of course, linked to each other. But then, when the ideas of the “European home” prevailed, objects began to develop common European transport infrastructure.

It is precisely such objects - highways and railways, navigable rivers and canals, pipelines, seaports and international airports - that now form the backbone of the pan-European transport infrastructure, determining its configuration. It is to them that attention is drawn not only to individual countries, but also to international general economic and transport organizations, especially within the framework of the UN and the European Union. As a result, in this important area of ​​the economy, many large-scale projects have been developed and, in part, have already begun to be implemented.

Integration processes had a great influence on the development of European railway transport. Until the early 1990s. they affected mainly Western Europe, where international rail expresses began to operate in many directions (Fig. 37).

Figure 37 schematically shows the directions of movement of 20 such express trains. We also add that each of them has its own name: Express No. 2 Amsterdam - Munich is called Rembrandt, Express No. 5 Frankfurt - Paris - Goethe, Express No. 8 Hamburg - Milan - Roland, Express No. 14 Amsterdam - Paris - "Brabant", Express No. 20 Basel - Milan - "Gothard". To this scheme, we need to add a few more express trains coming from Western Europe in the direction of Istanbul; they all usually have the prefix "Orient" ("East") in their name. Figure 37 allows you to identify the main end points and main interchange transport hubs, which are the most in Germany (Duisburg, Cologne, Frankfurt, Würzburg, Hannover, Nuremberg, Munich). In most of the directions marked on the map, the intensity of traffic is very high. For example, up to 350 trains run along the left bank of the Rhine between Cologne and Koblenz, and about 300 trains per day run along the right bank of the Rhine.

Since the early 1990s The reconstruction of the railway network is proceeding in two main directions. This is, firstly, the already described creation of high-speed highways on the main sections of passenger traffic. And this, secondly, is the unification of the railways of Western and Central-Eastern Europe.

It can be added that quite significant differences between the northern and southern groups of countries also historically developed over the vast territory of the latter subregion. In Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary, railway construction was carried out mainly as early as the 19th century, and they are characterized by a generally dense railway network. In the Balkan countries, the formation of such a network began later, and as a result, its density turned out to be less. Therefore, during the existence of a planned economy in this subregion of Europe, railway construction took on a large scale here. Examples include the construction of the first railways in Albania, the construction of the Belgrade-Bar railway (a port on the Adriatic Sea) in the SFRY.

Rice. 37. International train express in Western Europe

Western Europe is ahead of Central-Eastern and in development road transport. In this subregion, with relatively short distances and, moreover, in the conditions of first weakening and then the abolition of customs barriers in most countries, the advantages of road transport were especially revealed, which outstripped all other modes in terms of growth rates. In general terms, an international network of motorways with a common numbering has already been created, the basis of which is motorways (Fig. 38).

In Germany, the network of autobahns has the form of a "lattice" with intersecting lines of latitudinal and meridional directions, and almost all of them continue beyond the borders of this country. Italy is dominated by lines of meridional direction, the main of which - the so-called "freeway of the Sun" - connects Milan with the southern tip of the peninsula, passing through Bologna, Florence, Rome and Naples. France, as one would expect, is characterized by a radial layout of the road network. One of the main highways ("South") connects Paris with Lyon, Marseille and Nice, the other ("East") - with Strasbourg. Then they continue respectively in Italy and Germany.

The countries of Western Europe have also achieved significantly more high level motorization (Fig. 106 in book I) than the states of Central and Eastern Europe, where until recently the development of road transport lagged noticeably behind, and the construction of modern motorways began only in Czechoslovakia and Poland. Therefore, in the 1990s. Great attention has been paid to the development of the road network in the countries of this subregion, especially the development of trans-European communications in the directions North-South and West-East. An example is the project for the construction of the North-South highway, designed primarily to serve tourist flows (Fig. 39).

According to the project, adopted back in 1982, this highway starts in the Polish port of Gdansk, where autotourists from Scandinavia get on ferries. Then it passes through the countries of Central and Eastern Europe to Athens and Istanbul with branches to the Adriatic and Black Seas. In Istanbul, two bridges across the Bosphorus can lead to the flow of cars into Turkey. Thus, ten countries are expected to participate in the construction of this highway with a total length of more than 10,000 km. The alignment should include many sections of existing roads, reconstructed in accordance with the standards of the motorway. However, events recent years in Central and Eastern Europe, including the situation in the former SFRY, is likely to significantly delay the implementation of this project.

In the 1990s, in the context of a completely new geopolitical situation in Europe, the strengthening of pan-European integration processes within the framework of a single European space, another project to create a pan-European road network - EVROVIA, covering the entire territory of Europe from the Atlantic to the Urals, became much more important. Designed for 15 years, it provides for the transformation of 58 thousand km of existing roads into modern European-class roads.

Integration processes have also affected the system inland waterways Europe. Their total length is 100 thousand km, including 85 thousand km of navigable rivers and 15 thousand km of navigable canals. Half of these routes are located within the CIS countries, the other half - within foreign Europe. Its main international river arteries have long been the Rhine and Danube. From this it clearly follows the expediency of connecting these two rivers with each other with the help of the "bundle" Rhine - Main - Danube.

The first attempt to create such a "bundle" was made at the end of the 8th century. Emperor of the Franks Charlemagne. At one time, Napoleon Bonaparte and Johann Wolfgang Goethe thought about it. But only the Bavarian king Ludwig I succeeded in 1836-1846. connect the Main with the Danube. True, the canal he built allowed only small vessels (with a carrying capacity of up to 120 tons) to pass through, for the advancement of which they used horse traction. In addition, a railway boom soon began in Western Europe, and the Ludwig Canal began to experience strong competition from the railways.

Rice. 38. Highways in foreign Europe

A new, modern project arose in Germany back in the 20s. 20th century As a kind preparatory phase such construction can be considered work to improve the conditions of navigation on the Rhine and especially on the Main. As a result, by the beginning of the 90s. 20th century 34 hydropower plants were built on the Main, which now provide a minimum depth of 2.5 m in the section of its flow from Bamberg to the mouth. At the same time, major hydraulic engineering work began on the Danube. With the construction of a cascade of hydroelectric power stations in its upper reaches, and then a large hydroelectric complex in the Iron Gates gorge on the Romanian-Yugoslav section of the river, it was possible to make it accessible for almost year-round navigation. Now ships with a carrying capacity of 1.5 thousand tons and a draft of 2.5 m can pass along the Danube.

Rice. 39. Trans-European Highway North-South Project

The connecting link between them was the Main-Danube Canal (Fig. 40), the construction of which began as early as 1962. The canal is 171 km long. Of these, 107 km fall on the northern (Main) slope of the watershed and 64 km on the southern (Danube) slope. The height difference is 243 m and is overcome with the help of 16 locks (11 on the northern and 5 on the southern slope). The section of the route between the cities of Bamberg and Nuremberg was put into operation in 1972, and the canal was completely completed in 1992. Self-propelled vessels with a carrying capacity of 1350 tons, a length of 80 m, a width of 9.5 m and a draft of 2.5 m can pass through the canal. m. After increasing the possible draft to 2.7 m, it will be able to pass ships with a carrying capacity of 1500 tons.

Rice. 40. Rhine-Main-Danube waterway

From now on, both main river routes of foreign Europe - the Rhine (over 300 million tons of cargo per year) and the Danube (over 100 million tons) - are interconnected and form a single waterway with a length of 3.5 thousand km from Rotterdam to Sulina at the mouth of the Danube. A motor vessel with a carrying capacity of 1350 tons covers this distance in 11 days, and in the opposite direction, against the current, in 17. However, such a through route may be important only for tourist cruises and part of the cargo, while their main flows are limited to certain sections of this waterway. way.

In connection with the Danube navigation, it is also important to mention that in Romania in 1984 the construction of the long-planned Danube-Black Sea canal was completed (Fig. 41). This channel has a length of 64 km, a width of 70-120 m and a depth of 7 m and can pass vessels with a deadweight of 7000 tons, shortening the route to the Black Sea (compared to the route through the Danube Delta) by 240 km, and to Constanta by 400 km. The maximum capacity of the channel is 75 million tons of cargo per year.

After the connection of the Rhine with the Danube, the press began to discuss project of the Great European Ring, which would allow for the transportation of goods and passengers along a single closed water route: St. Petersburg - Volga-Baltic - Volga - Volga-Don - Sea of ​​\u200b\u200bAzov - Black Sea - Danube - Main - Rhine - North Sea - Baltic Sea - St. Petersburg. Continuous transportation of goods along it can be ensured subject to the operation of vessels of the "river - sea" type.

Rice. 41. Danube Canal - Black Sea in Romania

We add that for a very long time there have been projects of waterways connecting the Danube with the Oder (the distance between Szczecin and Sulina is 2800 km) and with the Elbe (between Hamburg and Sulina 3000 km). Projects have also been developed for waterways connecting the Danube with the Adriatic Sea along the Sava and with the Aegean Sea along the Morava and Vardar. The same can be said about the project to connect the Rhine with the Rhone and create a single waterway from Rotterdam to Marseille. However, their implementation requires such huge investments that the states concerned have not yet been able to find. In addition, there are many additional border, customs, and broader general political problems.

However, with all the importance of the projects listed above, projects for the implementation of the so-called transport corridors between West and East Europe. It is these corridors that will play leading role in the processes of pan-European integration, in the creation of a pan-European transport system. The decision on such corridors was made in 1994 at the Second Pan-European Conference on Transport, where nine of them were outlined. They should cover all types of transport in the territory of 24 countries. Their total length will be almost 17 thousand km, and the commissioning dates are scheduled for the period up to 2010 (Table 15, Fig. 42). Each transport corridor should be polyhighway, i.e., to combine parallel lines of roads and railways, and sometimes pipelines, waterways and power lines.

Table 15

TRANSPORT CORRIDORS BETWEEN WESTERN AND EAST EUROPE

Rice. 42. Transport corridors between the West and the East of Europe (according to O. A. Volkov)

As shown in Table 15 and Figure 42, Corridor I will be the most important for the Baltic States and Poland. Corridor III will link the Western European transport system via Berlin with the transport systems of Poland and Ukraine. Corridor IV will run from Central Europe to the Balkans with branches to the Black Sea (to Constanta and Istanbul) and to the Aegean Sea (to Thessaloniki). Corridor V will connect the Adriatic through the territories of Hungary and Slovakia with the western part of Ukraine. Corridor VI will have a meridional direction and will run from the port of Gdansk to Slovakia. Corridor VII can be called the Danube Corridor, since it will link the six Danubian states (from Austria to Romania) using both land highways and the Danube waterway. Corridor VIII should connect the Adriatic and Black Seas and pass through the territories of Albania, Macedonia and Bulgaria.

For Russia, corridors II and IX are of particular importance.

The second transport corridor Berlin - Poznan - Warsaw - Minsk - Moscow will lead to a greater unification of the transport system of Russia (as well as the systems of Belarus and Poland) with the pan-European one. It must also be taken into account that access to Berlin also means access to Brussels, Paris, London. On the route of this corridor, work is already underway to improve roads and create a high-speed railway, which will reduce the time for trains between Moscow and Berlin from 19:30 to 12:00. with different gauges in Russia and Belarus (1524 mm) and in Poland and the rest of Europe (1435 mm).

The ninth transport corridor is the longest and has the most complex configuration. This is a corridor of meridional direction, which can be considered as a new, dating back to the 21st century, route “from the Varangians to the Greeks”. Indeed, it leads from the shores of the Baltic (Helsinki, St. Petersburg) to the coast of the Black (Odessa) and Aegean (Alexandroupolis) seas. At the same time, one of the routes of Corridor IX should pass through Kyiv, and the other through Moscow. Later, a decision was made to extend Corridor IX from Moscow to Nizhny Novgorod.

Both II and IX transport corridors should be continued in the future, entering the International transport corridors "West-East" and "North-South" as components. In the first case, this means going from Nizhny Novgorod with its new terminal to the Trans-Siberian Railway, through which 500,000 containers per year can be transited between Western Europe and the Far East. In the second, the continuation of the transport highway, first to Astrakhan, and then to

Dagestan, Azerbaijan with further access to Iran and the countries of the Middle East. At the same time, it should be taken into account that Russia has already begun to implement an agreement with the European Union on opening its inland waterways for the entry of foreign ships. In addition, Russia proposed to European countries to create an international water transport corridor Volga-Don-Danube with access to the sea lines of the Caspian Sea.

Let us also pay attention to the fact that Europe has already received a good transport connection with Asia Minor thanks to two modern road bridges across the Bosphorus, each of which passes more than 20 thousand cars a day. And soon, perhaps, she will get a more convenient connection with Africa. Back in 1995, Spain and Morocco decided to build a railway tunnel (similar to the Eurotunnel) through the Strait of Gibraltar. Its length should be 39 km, of which 20 km will pass under the bottom of the strait at a depth of 100 m.