Transhelvetic Channel
| Transhelvetic Channel | |
|---|---|
 planned course of the Trans-Helvetic Canal |
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| location | Geneva , Vaud , Neuchâtel , Bern , Solothurn , Aargau |
| length | 219 km |
| class | Va |
| Beginning | Saint-Sulpice on Lake Geneva |
| Parting posture | Mormont tunnel |
| The End | The Aare flows into the Rhine |
| Descent structures | 8 locks on the Lake Geneva side, 16 locks on the Rhine side |
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The Transhelvetic Canal is the name given to the project to build a direct waterway between the Mediterranean and the North Sea , which runs through Switzerland.
history
Shipmen and hydraulic engineers have been thinking about a direct waterway between the North Sea and the Mediterranean for 350 years. The waterway would lead from the North Sea over the Rhine and Aare into Lake Biel , from there over the Zihl Canal into Lake Neuchâtel and further over the European main watershed to Lake Geneva , where the Rhone would have continued to the Mediterranean. The technically most difficult part is undoubtedly the connection between Lake Neuchâtel and Lake Geneva, where, after the watershed to Lake Geneva, 85 meters in altitude must be overcome over a distance of almost 20 km.
Canal d'Entreroches
As early as the 17th century, the Canal d'Entreroches was supposed to connect Lake Neuchâtel and Lake Geneva through the narrow Entreroches gorge. Work on this began in 1638 and the connection between Orbe and Cossonay across the watershed and through this gorge was actually realized. For financial reasons, however, the work was abandoned in 1648 and the remaining section of the canal on the Venoge to Lake Geneva with a height difference of 59 meters was never completed.
Projects in the 20th century
After the first tug association of modern freight shipping reached Basel in the summer of 1904 , interest in inland shipping arose in Switzerland. In 1908, an article was included in the Swiss Federal Constitution , according to which in addition to the use of hydropower , inland shipping should also be taken into account. One year later, the Association Romande pour la Navigation intérieure , the French-speaking Switzerland Association for Inland Navigation, was founded, which in 1910 was strategically renamed the Association Suisse pour la Navigation du Rhône au Rhin , the Swiss Rhone-Rhine Shipping Association (SRRS) . The association set itself the goal of promoting Swiss inland navigation and, in particular, examining the possibility of connecting the Rhine and the Rhone through Switzerland. He appointed a committee to draft a detailed project, which was presented at the third inland navigation congress in Lyon in 1911 .
In 1912 W. Martin presented the project of a new Canal d'Entreroches. Five locks were supposed to lead from Lake Geneva to the watershed, and two more to Lake Neuchâtel.
In 1916 it was enshrined in federal law that shipping should be taken into account when using hydropower. The SRRS was a useful forum to promote the interest of Geneva citizens and businesses in a waterway to the Rhine. Geneva was also interested in a shipping route to Lyon and Marseille . The Geneva Chamber of Commerce therefore founded the Comité franco-suisse du Haute-Rhône together with other chambers of commerce in the upper Rhone Valley . The committee quickly came into conflict with the French Corps des ingénieurs des ponts et chaussées , which showed no interest in a waterway and pursued its hydropower projects on the Upper Rhone.
In the Federal Council resolution of April 4, 1923, it was stated that the expansion of hydropower must not hinder navigation on the Aare from Lake Biel to the Rhine and the Zihl between Lake Neuchâtel and Lake Biel. If necessary, it should be possible to prepare the aforementioned river stretches for driving with tugs and barges with a capacity of 1000 to 1200 t.
After the outbreak of the Second World War, there was renewed interest in making the Rhone navigable as far as Geneva, so that if the supply via the Rhine had been interrupted, a second access to a sea port would have been available, which prompted the SRRS to decide at a meeting in Neuchâtel, that the Rhone project had to be implemented first before the Transhelvetic Canal could be tackled. After the federal government, the canton and the city of Geneva agreed to finance the study for this project, it was awarded in 1942.
The SRRS now concentrated again on the Trans-Helvetic Canal and in 1943 reached the federal government that they would contribute half of the costs of a study on the condition that the other half is raised by the SRRS, cantons, municipalities and private interested parties. After financing was secured in 1946, the federal government issued a message in 1947 to launch a study by the SRRS. The canal was only to be expanded to Brugg for 1200 t ships; further west, 900 t should be sufficient.
During the planning phase for the second correction of the waters of the Jura in 1957, a request was received from the national council commission, in which, among other things, the examination of the navigability of the Aare, the Jura lakes and a connection between the Neuchâtel and Geneva lakes was required. Shortly afterwards, the Swiss government and Germany set up a commission to examine a joint project to make the High Rhine navigable.
Without waiting for the results of the work of the commission, an advertising company propagated the "Transhelvetic Channel". According to this advertisement, the river stretch between Lake Biel and the mouth of the Aare in the Rhine can be managed with 14 barrages, making cargo shipping possible. Transhelvetica AG was the author of this campaign . The activities of the advocates of trans-Helvetic shipping led to the establishment of the intercantonal working group for the protection of the Aare (ASA) in 1964 , which wanted to avoid such and similar projects.
The Swiss Water Management Association did not consider the expansion of the Aare to be feasible. Nevertheless, the Rhone-Rhine Canal option was kept on the political agenda. The opposition remained accordingly attentive. The ASA received support from the Rheinaubund and the Bielersee interest group . In 1970, 33 organizations founded Aqua viva , the national action group for the conservation of rivers and lakes.
End of the project
The opinion of the Federal Council was undecided, as it did not want to make a specific decision on keeping waterways free for freight shipping. Even today there is no free keeping law, only an ordinance from 1993 regulates the keeping of waterways free. It replaces the Federal Council decision of April 4, 1923 and only states that projects on the Aare from the mouth of the Rhine to the Klingnau reservoir and on the Rhone from the state border to Lake Geneva must be approved by the Federal Office of Transport . However, the regulation no longer states how shipping is to be taken into account on these routes.
In 2006, the canton of Vaud approved the areas intended for the canal for spatial planning purposes. The idea of the Trans-Helvetic Canal was finally dropped.
See also
literature
- Andreas Teuscher: Switzerland by the Sea - Plans for the “Central Harbor” of Europe including crossing the Alps with ships in the 20th century. Limmat Verlag, Zurich 2014, ISBN 978-3-85791-740-0 .
- Urs Haenni: Rhine-Rhone connection via Friborg waters . In: Freiburger Volkskalender . Kanisius Verlag, 2010, p. 92-97 ( rero.ch [PDF]).
- La liaison Rhône-Rhin par la Suisse . In: Bulletin technique de la Suisse romande . 1966, doi : 10.5169 / SEALS-68370 .
- H. Blattner: Preparation of an expansion plan for the waters between Lake Geneva and the mouth of the Aare in the Rhine . 1948, doi : 10.5169 / SEALS-56672 .
- Julian Schmidli: Trans-Helvetic Canal . 2012 ( transhelvetica.ch [PDF]).
Web links
- Canal du Rhin au Rhône. ASNAV, accessed December 1, 2019 .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Alexander Künzle: 100 years of the gateway to the world at the knee of the Rhine. In: swissinfo.ch. March 27, 2004, accessed December 1, 2019 .
- ↑ a b A. Badenoch, A. Fickers: Materializing Europe: Transnational Infrastructures and the Project of Europe . Springer, 2010, ISBN 978-0-230-29231-4 , pp. 285 , footnote 36 ( google.de ).
- ↑ a b c d e f H. Blatter
- ^ H. Blattner: The Swiss Federal Railways and making the Rhine navigable between Basel and Lake Constance . In: Schweizerische Bauzeitung . 1950, doi : 10.5169 / SEALS-58135 .
- ↑ Expansion of the Rhone to Lake Geneva . In: Schweizerische Bauzeitung . 1941, doi : 10.5169 / SEALS-83480 .
- ↑ SR 747.219.1 Ordinance of April 21, 1993 on Keeping Waterways Free. In: Portal of the Swiss Government. Accessed December 1, 2019 .