Relieving the environment and the roads:
Inland navigation

Travelling on the water is not only great fun - it can also be especially kind to the environment. Just compare the figures: One barge can carry up to 100 containers - equivalent to 100 truck loads. And by the way, in Baden-Wurttemberg, there is more freight shipped by water than carried by rail. There are many reasons in favour of giving inland navigation a greater role to help deal with the traffic problems of the future.

An effective inland navigation system requires modern and efficient ports. Around 180 million tonnes of freight per annum are transferred between ship and rail in Germany's 100 inland ports. It would require some 6 million trucks to handle this amount of freight - a column of vehicles which, if arranged bumper-to-bumper, would encircle the planet 2.5 times over.

The River Neckar - the central Waterway
for Baden-Württemberg

The so-called Rhine basin includes, in addition to the Rhine itself, and the Mosel, the Main and Neckar rivers. Thanks to the linking of these great navigational waterways, the Swabian capital is able to provide on an extensive basis environmentally-friendly integrated transportation and excellent economic conditions for warehousing, logistics, manufacturing and services.

Germany's inland waterways

Germany enjoys some 7,500 kilometres of navigable waterways suitable for the transportation of freight and passengers alike. This amounts to about one third of the country's free-flowing and flow-regulated rivers and canals for each type of transportation. As part of the European Rivers Network, Germany's navigable waterways provide links to ports on the North Sea, the Baltic and the Black Seas.