Le projet de liaison Rhin-Rhône à gabarit européen ou les mystères d'un pari

From the early sixties, the Rhine-Rhone Canal project gave rise to numerous announcements according to which the project was to be carried out shortly, but gave also rise to a lot of forecasts and assessment studies which suggested to decision makers not to realize it. Even though waterborne transport is generally regarded as little promising especially for sites where the network is allowing too many locks, the realization of the project was enacted in 1995 in a French Act. According to this Act, the project is to reach completion by 2010. Nevertheless, in 1961, French Commissaire au Plan sent a letter to the Prime Minister in order to suggest that the project should be cancelled definitively. His arguments were based on a fascinating description of what transport needs should be in the future and have actually become on. In France as well as in Germany, from the '70s onwards, the waterborne market share is on a decreasing trend. The only efficient part of the waterborne network is the part free of lock, one on which freight prices are competitive enough compared with railway prices thus balancing a lower commercial speed. But when locks density increases, the commercial speed on rivers decreases lower and lower while operating costs are necessary increase. With one lock every 10 km, and even more, the Rhine-Rhone Canal will be a weak competitor of the railway which offers already a capacity several times more important than the future capacity of the canal. The Rhine shipping route and the lessons that can be drawn from it, as well as the example of the Rhine-Main-Danube Canal, are frequently used by the Rhine-Rhone lobby in the French debate. On the contrary, the technical and economic comparisons show that the German example proves the poor interest of the very costly French project. In addition, this paper presents the stratagems by which politicians were deceived despite several official forecasts and evaluation studies.