INLAND NAVIGATION PROJECTS IN SWITZERLAND
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In the first half of the 20th century, many projects were considered to promote inland navigation on Swiss rivers and lakes. The following is a brief description of these plans that is comprehensible to the layman without going into technical, economic and political details. The navigability of the European and Swiss rivers was already an issue in the Middle Ages, with the Dutch apparently taking the lead. In 1609 they offered to blow up the Rhine Falls and the rapids at Koblenz and Laufenburg at their own expense in order to allow rafts to pass freely to Holland. In 1638 the construction of the Canal d'Entreroches in Vaud was started, see under "Transhelvetic Canal".
The old Canal d'Entreroches through the range of Haut du Mormont near Eclépens Kaspar Stockalper (1609-1691), an entrepreneur, salt trader and politician from Brig, already wanted to build a canal from Lake Geneva to Valais in the 17th century, probably as a feeder to the Simplon Pass. However, only a few kilometres of the few metres wide canal in Lower Valais were built. After a short time, operation was stopped and the canal sank into oblivion. One might laugh at these projects today, but a hundred and twenty years ago there were no proper roads and trucks, only horse-drawn carts. The railway was still in its infancy, slow and inefficient. So, it was only natural to think about how to further expand freight shipping on our lakes and rivers and how to interconnect them as much as possible. In 1908, an article was added to the federal constitution saying that river engineering should take account of the interests of power generation and inland navigation. The Federal Council decision of April 4, 1923 divided the navigable, or still to be made navigable, waterways into two classes: The first class waterways for ships of 1,000 – 1,200 tonnes included:
With the following stretches of water, the decision had not yet been made as to whether they should be classified in the first or the second class (ships of 600 tonnes):
As early as the 1960s, the discussion evolved around traffic in general, and the responsible federal agencies asked themselves whether the projects to make the High Rhine and Aare navigable should be implemented as quickly as possible to relieve the strain on the railways, roads and Basel ports. However, it seems that the federal government and business circles were not really sure whether these projects would have been really profitable. In the 1950s and 1960s, a strong front of nature conservationists and homeland protectionists emerged, which finally nullified these plans. Today, these plans simply reside in our country's archives and libraries. 1. The Alpine Canals Already in 1713 the Maloja-Inn Canal, which was meant to connect Vienna via the Danube and the Inn with Lake Como in Lombardy, was mentioned in Austria. Lombardy had been added to the Austrian Empire shortly before. Probably the boldest project came from the Italian engineer Pietro Caminada (1862-1923), whose father came from the municipality of Vrin in the canton of Grisons. His plan, which he presented to the public in 1907, included a canal connection (Canal Grande Transalpino) from Genoa via Milan, Lake Como, Chiavenna, Splügen Pass to Lake Constance, with an onward connection over the Rhine to the North Sea.
General view of the inclined tunnel-ducts across the Splügen Pass
The various tunnel profiles The standard barges guided from the canal bed
The Via Mala gorge had also to be overcome Caminada's test rig in Rome The writer Mrs. Anita Siegfried from Zurich linked facts about the project with fiction in her book “Steigende Pegel” published in 2016. It describes not only the life of Pietro Caminada, but also a fictitious barge ride through the pitch-dark alpine tunnels. This trip had been a nightmare for the two skippers on board, both of them suffering from claustrophobia. To calm them down again, there was "Kafi-Fertig" (coffee with schnapps) in a harbour pub in Thusis. As an alternative, Caminada still had the Gotthard Canal plan in his quiver. It would have connected the Adriatic Sea to Lake Lucerne via the Po and the Lago Maggiore and further to the North Sea via Reuss and Rhine. 2. Development of the High Rhine At the beginning of the 20th century, not only Swiss, but also German and Austrian business associations, campaigned to make the High Rhine navigable from Basel to Lake Constance. The “Nordostschweizerische Verband für Schiffahrt Rhein-Bodensee” in St. Gallen, founded in 1908, was one of the driving forces behind this project. Already involved in negotiations for the regulation of the Rhine between Strasbourg and Basel, Germany had proposed in 1928/29 expanding shipping to Lake Constance at the same time. Today, barges can only reach Rheinfelden, where the last cargo handling facility is in Badisch Rheinfelden on the German side. The High Rhine project of 1942 of the Federal Office for Water Management in Bern provided two options; firstly, continuous operation for motor ships of 70 m in length and 900 tonnes (called small development), or secondly, tugboat operation consisting of a tug of 1000 HP and a towed barge of 80 m length and 1200 tonnes (called large development). The fairway depth should be 2.8 m and the air draft, i.e. the free height from the water surface to the lower edge of bridges and tunnels should be 6.5 m. From today's point of view, this waterway would be too small, since motor ships with a length of 135 m and a carrying capacity of 3,300 tonnes are no longer uncommon in Basel. In order to overcome the height difference between Basel and Lake Constance of almost exactly 150 m (the water levels change according to the water flow), 14 barrages each with a lock were planned. To bypass the Rhine Falls, a double lock was foreseen, i.e. a total of 15 locks. The distance from Basel to the weir of Hemishofen (near Stein am Rhein at the outflow of the Untersee) is 132 km. The theoretically calculated travel times upriver from Basel to Romanshorn were 37 hours 20 minutes for a tug and barge unit and 25 hours 20 minutes for a self-propelled barge. Correspondingly shorter travel times were calculated for the descent from Romanshorn to Basel, namely 19 hours 40 minutes for a tug and barge unit and 16 hours 20 minutes for a motor ship. Of course, these theoretical travel times did not allow waiting times in front of the locks or any other loss of time, for whatever reason. In the 20th century, the idea of blasting away the Rhine Falls, as the Dutch had proposed 300 years earlier, was no longer considered. Instead, it was to be bypassed. The project from 1942 planned to bypass the Rheinau peninsula and the Rhine Falls in two short tunnels. At the beginning of the 1960s, presumably under pressure from environmentalists, two new options were considered, the "small Kohlfirst" and the "great Kohlfirst". In the "small Kohlfirst" option, ships would have been raised 34 m by means of a double lock just after Rheinau and then led through a 4.8 km long tunnel to the village of Paradies above the city of Schaffhausen. In the "large Kohlfirst" variant, the fairway would have been branched off above Ellikon, raised 47 m with a boat lift and led to Paradise in a 9 km long canal, 3.5 km of which in a tunnel.
The tunnel under the peninsula of Rheinau
The original idea of circumventing the Rhine falls The project was based on the assumption that an average of 2.0 million tonnes of goods would be transported via this waterway per year. To illustrate, the traffic to the Basel ports in 1937 totalled 2.75 million tonnes, composed of: - Coal 1,437,000 t 52.4 % However, 1937 was a very good year for shipping, and it interesting to know, at that time only 6% of the goods were moved onwards by road, the rest of the goods were transported by rail. Today this ratio would probably be reversed. Ports were planned in the Aargau Rhine Valley, Turgi / Brugg, Eglisau and Schaffhausen, as well as various ports on Lake Constance. The total construction costs, according to the "Entwurf für den Ausbau der Rheinschiffahrtsstrasse Basel bis Bodensee, Mitteilungen des Amtes für Wasserwirtschaft Nr. 35, Bern 1942" (Draft for the shipping project Basel to Lake Constance of the federal government) would have been about 146 million Swiss francs, with about 40% paid by Switzerland and 60% by Germany and Austria. The powerful Swiss Federal Railways SBB fought against the project, which it saw as an unpleasant new competitor. But Basel was also afraid of "traffic deprivation" if the ships sailed past Basel to Lake Constance instead of discharging in Basel. However, Basel would have remained the terminal station for large tug and barge compositions and part of the cargo would still have been handled here. On the other hand, SBB operated the trajectory traffic and shipping on Lake Constance at the time and it was not considered impossible for SBB to participate further in shipping. The SBB warehouses in Romanshorn would probably also have benefited. There was also a provision for tax exemption for shipping on the High Rhine, such as had existed on the Rhine below Basel for a long time. The SBB also considered this exemption as unfair competition. In the first half of the 20th century, various industries took shipping into account when choosing their location and set up their businesses on the banks of a river or lake. The chemical factory Uetikon was not by chance located on the shores of Lake Zurich (before the railway line was built, a small steam ferry brought the railway carriages from Wollishofen to Uetikon) and the Wädenswil brewery delivered its beer up to the end of the 1960s with its tug GAMBRINUS and a lighter to the beer depots around Lake Zurich. With a navigable Limmat and Linth, the brewery could have distributed beer in a larger area by ship – perhaps even to Rotterdam and instead of Heineken, the Wädenswil brewery might have become one of the world's best-known breweries! Other companies, e.g. the soap manufacturer Steinfels from Zurich also made such considerations. Gottlieb Duttweiler, the founder of Migros, "wisely" built an underground tank farm on the banks of the Rhine between Eglisau and the Töss estuary. Unfortunately, Duttweiler miscalculated with this venture and a tanker never docked here to unload its cargo.
The tug GAMBRINUS with lighter loaded with barrels of beer, from a mural on a disused beer depot in the canton of Zurich In 1951 there were public disagreements about the height of the water head in the planned construction of the Rheinau power plant, which culminated in large demonstrations. As a result, the Rheinaubund was founded in Schaffhausen, and it is probably thanks to this organization that the High Rhine shipping was never realized. 3. Connection between Rhine / Lake Constance and the Danube River These ideas are very old, even Charlemagne commenced to dig a canal between the Main and the Danube, but it was never completed due to technical difficulties. Later, King Ludwig of Bavaria built a canal for ships up to 120 tonnes from 1836 to 1846, which, however, soon lost its importance with the advent of the railway. Today the Rhine is connected to the Danube via the Main and the Main-Danube Canal. This waterway for large ships was put into operation in 1992. Various plans emerged to connect the Rhine with the Danube via Lake Constance. A project in 1908 envisaged a canal for ships of 600 tonnes, which was to lead, via the small rivers Riss and Schussen, from Ulm on the Danube to Lake Constance at Langenargen (between Friedrichshafen and Lindau). Rudolf Gelpke proposed in 1916 a canal from the Untersee to the upper Danube, from Radolfzell am Untersee via Immendingen to Tuttlingen on the Danube. In 1921, Prof. Adolf Göller from Stuttgart announced his plans to create a canal for ships of 1200 tonnes from Friedrichshafen to Ulm. The ships would have ascended about 150 m from Lake Constance via numerous locks, then lowered again 100 m to the Danube. A string of locks would have been created between Ravensburg and Münchenreute. However, the Danube would have had to have been adapted from Ulm to Regensburg for the intended shipping. 4. Project of the Transhelvetic Canal As early as the Middle Ages, Dutch merchants wanted to create an inland waterway from Amsterdam via the Rhine and Rhone to Marseille, since Dutch navigation through the English Channel, around Catholic Spain and through the Strait of Gibraltar was dangerously and severely affected by the political situation at the time, as well as the North African pirates. The French-born Dutchman Elie Gouret started building the Canal d'Entreroches with the help of Dutch, French, Bernese and Vaudois shareholders, with construction beginning in 1638 and the section from Yverdon to Cossonay was opened after ten years of construction and kept in operation until 1829. However, due to lack of money and technical difficulties, further construction towards Lake Geneva had to be stopped. Today, you can still visit the remains of the Canal d'Entreroches; it’s easiest if you take a short hike through this picturesque, forested gorge from the Eclépens train station (on the railway line from Yverdon to Lausanne) (see also our photo gallery). In 1910, the SRRS, Swiss Rhône-Rhine Shipping Association, was founded in western Switzerland. The first project by engineer W. Martin from Lausanne was presented as early as 1912; the specification at that time was a barge 65 m long and of 600 tonnes capacity, pulled by electric towing locomotives.
The Zihl-Canal between Lake Neuchâtel and Lake Bienne was constructed during the correction of the Jura waters. The river vessel is the AXALP, an ancient cargo vessel from the Rhine, transporting excavation material to a cement factory By decision of December 16, 1947, the federal government participated in the elaboration of a two-part study which was prepared by the SRRS, first a technical study with the construction costs, followed by an economic study. For the project of the Transhelvetic Canal, the same requirements were laid down as for the High Rhine, i.e. for the continuous operation of motor ships of 70 m length and 900 tonnes, as well as for the towing operation from the Rhine to Brugg (confluence of Reuss and Limmat), consisting of one tug of 1000 HP and a towed barge 80 m length and 1200 tonnes. As early as 1954, the European Conference of Transport Ministers in Paris designated the "Johann Welker" type motor cargo vessel with a capacity of 1,250 tonnes and dimensions of 80.00 m x 9.50 m x 2.50 m as the normal type for waterways of European interest (class IV). The Rhone-Rhine connection and the Adria-Lago Maggiore connection also belonged to these waterways. At that time, our planning did not meet European standards. From the confluence of the Aare and the Rhine near Klingnau (317 m above sea level), the ships would have reached the Lake of Bienne and the Lake of Neuchâtel via the canalized Aare with 13 locks and a total difference in height of 112 m. From Yverdon at the western end of the Lake of Neuchâtel to the watershed (443 m above sea level) on the Mormont range the channel would have been fitted again with 3 locks to climb another 14 m. The ships would have reached the catchment area of the Rhône through a 700 m long tunnel and would have quickly descended through the canalized Venoge via 8 further locks and a 72 m difference in height to Lake Geneva (371 m above sea level). The section from Lake Neuchâtel to Lake Geneva is also known as the Canal d'Entreroches. The kilometres would have started at Lake Geneva as a zero point and would have reached 218 km at the mouth of the Aare near Klingnau. Due to the two Jura waters corrections, the first one from 1868 - 1891 and the second one from 1962 - 1973, only minor adjustments would have been necessary between Lake Neuchâtel and Solothurn. The sailing time on the canal from the mouth of the Aare to Lake Geneva or vice versa was estimated to take between 26 and 30 hours (7.2 to 8.4 km / h).
The Canal d'Entreroche would have been a special challenge, as there would not have been enough water at the top to operate the locks. According to the plans, three pumping stations would have pumped water up from Lake Neuchâtel to the watershed. The Venoge flowing to Lake Geneva would have been taken up by the shipping canal at Cossonay. The sparse water of the Venoge would not have been used to generate electricity, but the locks would have been provided with flood relief. The small river Orbe, which flows from the Jura near Orbe through the plain from Orbe to Lake Neuchâtel, was not considered for water withdrawal. Too many water rights for the use of power plants restricted the river and the municipality of Orbe also drained part of its wastewater into this river, so that sludge formation and growth in the shipping channel had to be feared. The plan was to raise the bed of the Orbe by two metres and use an aqueduct below the Orbe lock to guide it across the shipping canal to the other side in order to flow in a separate river bed to Lake Neuchâtel. Passing through the gorge in Brugg would also have been a real challenge. Between the rocks at the "Black Tower" in the old town, the Aare is only 18 m wide and the ships would have had to have been routed for about 500 m in a one-way traffic system. A project with a bypass tunnel was also contemplated later.
The gorge in the small town of Brugg, to the left the view down river and to the right, the view up river. Below the bridge the water is about 14 meter deep The study estimated the construction costs as of September 1, 1949 at CHF 343 million, ports and transhipment facilities not included. In addition, there would have been the operating costs, since free shipping would be guaranteed for all nations. In this context, the applied hourly wages are interesting, for a bricklayer it was 2.20 - 2.60 francs and for a labourer it was 1.94 - 2.05 francs. Even then, the economic study was very cautious and based on many assumptions. A total volume annually of about 2.2 million tonnes was estimated on this waterway, consisting of import, export, transit and domestic traffic. Coal, liquid fuels, ores, metals, cereals, sugar, chemical products, fertilizers, wood, pulp and paper were mentioned as transport goods, of which coal was the main part at that time. Only a small likelihood was given to achieving a significant transit traffic, as a connection from the Danube to Lake Constance and the Rhine was missing. The two oil refineries in Collombey (on the Rhone estuary) and in Cressier (on the Zihl Canal), which went into operation in the 1960s, were supplied by pipelines from the Mediterranean, Cressier from the Fos-sur-Mer tanker port near Marseille and Collombey from the port of Genoa. Despite the good starting position for inland navigation, there would be little earning potential for the shipowners, because the finished products are distributed in Switzerland by train or truck. Here too, the environmentalists gave the project the killing blow, at the forefront being the Association for the Protection of the Aare ASA, founded in 1964 and Aqua Viva, founded in 1970. Aqua Viva still exists today and merged with the Rheinaubund in 2012. In 2006, the canton of Vaud was the last to delete the Ordinance on the Conservation of Waters, which meant the final end of shipping. Today there is only the French canal "Canal du Rhône au Rhin", which branches off the Rhine-Side Canal at Niffer / Mulhouse and leads via Belfort to the Saône and on to the Rhône. The canal was completed in 1833, has numerous locks and is only navigable for peniches (the old French standard canal barge) with a maximum length of 38.5 m and a width of 5.05 m and a load capacity of 250 tonnes. Its economic importance is very low, but today it is often used by sportsmen. 5. Navigation of the Rhone to Geneva The Transhelvetic Canal would have been a pointless exercise without a continuation of shipping from Lake Geneva to the navigable Rhone near Lyon. The gradient from Lake Geneva to Lyon is 213 m over a total river length of 270 km. The expansion of the Rhone to the existing Rhone shipping in Lyon would have been largely manageable without major problems. Crucial points were the passage through the city of Geneva and the gorge-like landscape with a steep gradient at Bellegarde. In Geneva, a port was planned in the mouth of the Arve and the connection to Lake Geneva was a tunnel under the city on the right side of the Rhone. A total of about 8 barrages would have been necessary to get to Lyon. The construction of the Génissiat power plant was started before the beginning of the Second World War, but the plant could only be completed after the end of the war. When it was finally completed in 1948, it was one of the largest river power plants in Europe. The rapidly flowing river was contained behind a dam about 70 m high, forming a lake about 23 km long, thereby flooding the difficult part of the river for shipping. Unfortunately no bypass-canal was built for shipping at the time. 6. Shipping connection to Zurich The Lake Zurich shipping connection would have been a very demanding undertaking, but on the other hand, two very different options would have been available. One option would have been the Limmat, the second one to channel the small river Glatt. At the beginning of the 20th century, the intention was to make the entire course of the Limmat navigable, but two decades later, preference was given to circumnavigating the heavily built-up cities of Baden and Wettingen, with a channel connection to the Reuss being projected to avoid the two towns.
The connection canal with a tunnel between the Reuss and the Limmat, above the power station of Wettingen At Birmensdorf, a ship lift would have lifted the barges by around 35 m, then a canal with a 3 km tunnel under the village of Dättwil and Heitersberg would have brought the ships to the Limmat. The canal would have flowed into the reservoir above the current Wettingen power plant. Then on the Limmat to the port of Schlieren and further on in a canal through Altstätten, Albisrieden and a tunnel to reach the Lake Zurich at Wollishofen. The second option can be seen on the plans of an urban planning competition in Zurich at the time of the First World War. It consisted of channelling the Glatt from the Rhine to Opfikon and here between Zurich-Oerlikon and Kloten (where Zurich Airport is today) to build a large port facility with harbour basins and industrial areas. Shipping would have also reached the Lake of Zurich through a tunnel under the Züriberg. In a detailed, two-part article in the newspaper “Die Tat” from May 13 and 20, 1938, engineer Kaspar Jenny outlined the idea of a passage through the existing river bed in the city of Zurich. He wanted to dam the Limmat at the Rathausbrücke and install a lock. Downstream, the river bed would have been dredged a few metres to lower the water level and create enough clearance under the bridges.
Shipping right through the heart of Zurich. The old harbour crane from Rostock, a so-called "piece of art" of 2008 could have made a bit of sense In the pre-war period there was a devastating economic crisis in Europe and Kaspar Jenny had wanted to make mainly "a proposal for productive job creation". It was only on December 22, 1950 that the Federal Council deleted the Limmat and the Linth as well as the Glatt from the original land reserve list. 7. Shipping connection to the Lake Walensee and to Sargans Shipping could also have been extended to the Walensee. Barges towed by horses had used the Linth between Lake Zurich and Walensee for hundreds of years in the past. The Linth correction brought a lowering of the water level in the Walensee, thus a decrease in the gradient to Lake Zurich. Unfortunately, no thought was given to shipping and the current in the Linth Canal is too strong and additional building measures would have been necessary. They even wanted to channel the small river Seez and bring the ships even to Sargans. Since the Seez carries little water, one would have had to take water from the Rhine to operate the necessary locks (difference in height 70 m on a stretch of 16 km). Technically it would have been possible to extend the canal to Chur, but the protagonists of the project preferred the extension of the Rhaetian Railway to the port of Sargans. At that time the Gonzen mine was still producing iron ore and the ships could have taken it over directly. 8. Shipping to Lake Lucerne via Lake Zug At the beginning of the 20th century, people had considered shipping to Lake Lucerne, coming via a navigable Aare, Reuss and Lake Zug to Lake Lucerne. The detour via Lake Zug was chosen because even then, due to increased construction in the city of Lucerne, a reasonable development in this section of the river would not be possible. Firstly, the ships would have sailed the Reuss, then from the confluence of the Lorze in a separate shipping channel along the Lorze to the Lake Zug. The almost 90 m difference in height would have been overcome by seven barrages, each also utilised for an electrical power plant. At Immensee, the barges would have been raised in a double lock to the level of Lake Lucerne 20 m higher and would then have reached Lake Lucerne near Küssnacht through a short canal with a tunnel. A second tunnel would have drained water into Lake Zug for use in an underground power station. The main idea of this shipping route was naturally transit traffic to Italy. The goods would have been transferred at a a port in Flüelen to the Gotthard railwayin order to transfer them to Italian ships in a port at the upper end of the Lago Maggiore. On the eve of World War II, an annual freight volume of around 4.0 million tonnes, of which 3.0 million tonnes of goods in transit, mainly coal, was expected. Dr. Nicolas Jaquet, long-time director of the Swiss Shipping Company and member of the National Council, wrote in a commemorative publication: “The connection across the Aare to Lake Lucerne is technically feasible. The end point of Swiss shipping in the sense of the Gotthard policy is Flüelen. If we manage to bring north-south traffic to Flüelen by ship and hand it over to the Italian ship in line with the Lombardy canal projects in Bellinzona, Switzerland's position in through traffic would in future be unassailable”. 9. Shipping to the Lago Maggiore Michelangelo and other men were already involved in waterway projects in the Po Valley in the Middle Ages. In the 15th century, smaller ships apparently reached Lago Maggiore via the Ticino river. Before the Second World War, various project variants were discussed in Italy; the Adriatic coast was to be connected to Milan, Lake Garda, Lake Como and Lago Maggiore via rivers and canals. The Swiss Confederation was also partially involved in these plans, and Switzerland was particularly interested in shipping to Lago Maggiore to continue and extend the Gotthard transit line by ship. In a port on the Magadino plain, the goods would have been reloaded onto the barges for onward transport to northern Italy and to the Adriatic seaports.
The planned development of the Italian canal system in the plain of the river Po Today the Po is navigable to Cremona and the few existing Italian inland vessels reach the seaports of Venice via the canals and lagoons. Thanks to the powerful road transport lobby, inland navigation has long been dormant and its capacity has never been fully utilized. The EU has apparently initiated a rethink, some of these projects again have been brought out of the drawer to relieve the chronically congested northern Italian motorways. However, it remains to be seen whether these new plans will ever become reality. 10. Final remarks This is how the dreams of Swiss inland travel ended. Technical progress quickly overtook what was considered a sensible and modern transport solution 100 or 150 years ago. Technically, these plans would have been feasible, but the economic viability finally set the limits. Today, cargo ships of 135 m length travel with approximately 3,200 to 3,300 tonnes to Basel, but of course only if there is enough water in the Rhine below Karlsruhe and through the German mountains (between Mainz and Bonn). It also appears that too little attention was paid to the requirements of push barging. Our waterways, as planned, would have had soon to be adapted to the new needs with great financial expenditure or would have become obsolete. If there is less rain in Europe due to climate change, there will be extreme and long-lasting periods of low water in the future, which will be very detrimental to the reliability of inland navigation. Who knows, today's highly praised and supposedly future-oriented transport solutions, such as “Cargo sous Terrain” may also be overrun by technical progress and gently ridiculed by the public, living in a hundred years. SwissShips HPS June 2020 / Translation NB 2020 Sources: - ETH Lausanne „Transport Naturel par Voie d'eau“ from Pietro Caminada, Rome, 1907 |
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