
Inland Waterways Europe: Maps and Fleet - brudgers
http://www.inlandnavigation.eu/what-we-do/maps-fleet/
======
superice
The history behind inland shipping is quite interesting. When the first
container barges started to appear in the 70s, the minimum distance to make it
viable against trucking was predicted to be 200km+. Nowadays, distances are
short as 50km are barged, or even shorter sometimes when doing in-port
transshipment within bigger ports like Rotterdam or Antwerp. (Keep in mind
that the Rotterdam port area is about 45km long, stretching from Maasvlakte to
the city centre)

Classically the Rhine region has seen a lot of container transport, but over
time other canals and rivers have seen container terminals pop up. In
addition, smaller sea ports have essentially become inland ports with the rise
of main ports like Rotterdam and Antwerp. The bigger ships (20 000+
containers) are received there, and then distributed onto smaller feeders or
barges that will then hop to the various smaller ports in the region. If you
look at a map of inland terminals in the Netherlands, you can get to virtually
anywhere within a range of 50km over water. In Belgium they are trying to
alleviate the heavy truck traffic in the Antwerp region by offloading this
traffic onto trains and barges. Even in places where only narrow or shallow
canals are available, smaller barges will take 12 to 24 trucks of the road at
a time.

It's incredible how much potential there still is to take trucks off the road
and use water transportation instead. It's much better in terms of CO2
emitted, and it's also a lot cheaper. It's just harder to plan, since there is
inflexibility in destinations, you need last-mile trucking, and the total
transport will usually be a lot slower. All in all difficult, but solvable
problems. Most of these are information problems and that's what my employer
is trying to solve in software :)

~~~
contingencies
Another amazing thing is how early the Chinese (with significant inland
natural waterways) were building mega-scale artificial waterways for this
purpose. See
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Canal_(China)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Canal_\(China\))
(~6th century) and
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_canals_in_China](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_canals_in_China)
.. also how different (and in some ways superior) their sail plans were
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Junk_rig](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Junk_rig)

------
lqet
It still amazes me how dense the European waterways are. For example, it is
possible to travel from Switzerland to Budapest by boat _fairly_ directly via
Rhine, Main and Danube, without going through the Mediterranean. Somehow, this
seems completely counter-intuitive.

~~~
cwmma
or the fact you can go from Amsterdam to the black sea fairly directly and
from there to st. petersburg is even more mind boggling

~~~
Doxin
The fact that Amsterdam has a harbour in the first place is pretty amazing,
it's not exactly a coastal city.

~~~
lqet
It isn't?

[https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=9/52.7870/5.4190](https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=9/52.7870/5.4190)

The third largest port of Europe, Hamburg, is 110 kilometers away from the
coast.

[https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=10/53.6002/10.1280](https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=10/53.6002/10.1280)

~~~
cwmma
My favorite one of these is Iquitos in Peru, which is an Atlantic port,
reachable by ocean going vessels, 2,200 miles away from the ocean

------
Doctor_Fegg
There's a (fairly rudimentary) OpenStreetMap-based rendering of European
waterways here:
[https://maps.grade.de/mobile.htm](https://maps.grade.de/mobile.htm)

Somewhere on my todo list is a more detailed one with North American coverage.
(But the list is long.)

------
jvdvegt
The Dutch (and most busy) part is hardly readable. Check
[https://vaarweginformatie.nl/frp/main/#/geo/map?layers=FAIRW...](https://vaarweginformatie.nl/frp/main/#/geo/map?layers=FAIRWAY&sublayer=FAIRWAY)
for much more details.

~~~
brnt
In case you're looking for something like flightradar:

[https://www.marinetraffic.com/nl/ais/home/centerx:7.6/center...](https://www.marinetraffic.com/nl/ais/home/centerx:7.6/centery:49.1/zoom:6)

~~~
antsar
(Off-topic) That link is localized "nl", and I'm in the US, but for some
reason it's trying to access google.cn. ಠ_ಠ

[https://i.paste.pics/1d51475b28fe67095693ca871c7fdc5f.png](https://i.paste.pics/1d51475b28fe67095693ca871c7fdc5f.png)

------
alexhutcheson
This Wikipedia article has a similar map for the United State:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inland_waterways_of_the_United...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inland_waterways_of_the_United_States)

Incidentally, the inland waterways of the US would probably have much more
freight traffic if the Jones Act didn't make it illegal to use foreign-built
vessels for traffic between US ports:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merchant_Marine_Act_of_1920#Ca...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merchant_Marine_Act_of_1920#Cabotage)

------
roter
You can download free charts for many of Europe's inland waterways. One great
method is to use OpenCPN [0,1] and its "Chart Downloader".

[0] [https://opencpn.org/](https://opencpn.org/)

[1]
[https://opencpn.org/OpenCPN/info/chartsource.html](https://opencpn.org/OpenCPN/info/chartsource.html)

------
kangnkodos
Can I put a shipping container house on a barge and live on the inland
waterways?

[https://www.curbed.com/2017/6/21/15839730/shipping-
container...](https://www.curbed.com/2017/6/21/15839730/shipping-container-
house-for-sale-buy)

~~~
contingencies
Interesting idea. Probably could, but it wouldn't pass inspection for
registration as quarters on a vessel itself, so you'd have to have it as
cargo. Then I guess if/when declaring cargo crossing borders you'd have to say
a couple of humans in this box thing, which is odd and sure to raise eyebrows,
smuggle you or list you as crew. So basically you'd be paying for the barge
anyway, and living in worse conditions in a largely uninsulated (and probably
power hungry) box on board.

What's the point? Just get a boat. There are many cheap boats, many people
live on them. Check [https://www.yachtworld.com/](https://www.yachtworld.com/)
[http://www.cruisersforum.com/](http://www.cruisersforum.com/)
[https://sailinganarchy.com/](https://sailinganarchy.com/) for a start.
Roughly <=USD$20K will get you something that floats and 1-2 people can live
in cramped but OK.

------
dcustodio
I wonder if there are any costs to use the waterways. Even if the boats are
slower than trains, couldn't it be the case that with all the layovers a train
takes as much or more time than a boat? It would be cool to have a boat
service similar to Flixbus.

~~~
superice
Yeah, there is: speed. I work on software for inland cargo shipping, and the
major factor there is speed and inflexibility of destinations. Trains, at
least for cargo, are easily faster by a factor of two, if not faster. Going
from the port of Rotterdam to Groningen (north of NL) takes about 24 hours by
barge, but will take only around 8 hours by cargo train. By passenger train
similar distances will take around 4 to 5 hours.

Usually this is not too big of an issue when transporting cheap bulk goods,
but especially food and other perishables (flowers!) are difficult when it
comes to transportation over water.

It's quite curious how the Europe is the only place with real inland shipping
networks over water, other regions do not even come close in terms of amount
of cargo transported, even though the natural resources are often there. The
rest of the world pretty much relies on trains and trucks to transport cargo.
There is quite some room for disruption here, but it's a hard an capital
intensive market to break into.

EDIT: To come back to your point about people, they often value time quite
highly. Not very many people take a ship to travel the world anymore, even
though there is a lot of the earth reachable by the sea. Natural resources is
only one part of the equation, and usually the trade-off is between time and
money.

~~~
pintxo
Actually most other continents have far less rivers which lend themselves to
easy shipping. Also development in Europe was ahead of the curve in the last
couple hundred years (and before we did not have the technology for locks and
easy travel upriver). Now that everyone has catched up (or is in the process)
there are fare quicker/easier/cheaper/flexible options like trains, trucks,
planes available. So the pressure to build good waterways is way less.

------
benj111
This seems to be missing an awful lot of canals in the UK. Leeds Liverpool
canal, all the canals around Birmingham. Norfolk Broads. Manchester shipping
canal seems to have been cut short.

And I'm fairly certain you can sail from Bordeaux to Marseille, inland.

~~~
MayeulC
I think that as well, though the map seems mostly concerned with canals
available to big vessels.

I think you are thinking about the "Canal du Midi", which is still a quite
famous construction work form the 17th century:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canal_du_Midi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canal_du_Midi)

~~~
benj111
Big vessels perhaps.

I've seen some big ships in parts of the broads, and the Manchester shipping
canal is for, well, ships.

And yes I was thinking of the Canal du Midi.

------
INTPenis
I'm fascinated by the vikings so I've always wondered if these waterways
(especially the eastern one) were as easy to use 1000 years ago.

Also they forgot the modern waterway Göta Kanal in Sweden.

~~~
Doctor_Fegg
1000 years ago European waterways didn't have pound locks, so no, certainly
not as easy to use.

------
golergka
The linked waterway map is completely fantastic. It explains a lot about
European history and economic significance of certain cities as trade hubs.

