Waterway

Floating market on the waterway in thailand .

Waterway - sections of water bodies and watercourses used for navigation and timber rafting ^[1] ; any navigable waterway , including rivers , lakes , seas , oceans and canals .

Waterway criteria:

• It should be deep enough for the passage of ships on them;
• should be wide enough for several vessels to pass in width;
• must be free from obstructions for navigation , such as waterfalls and rapids , or have ways to get around them (e.g. canals and ship elevators );
• the flow in the waterway should be fairly calm;

Waterways are usually divided into external (sea) and internal . External waterways are seas (including bays) and oceans. Mostly shipping here is carried out in natural water basins. Only on shallow approaches to seaports or at river mouths, with a depth unsuitable for vessels with heavy draft, do external waterways pass through artificial sections - sea channels. Artificial external waterways are also canals connecting the seas and oceans ( Suez Canal , Panama and others). Sea transportation on external waterways is divided into foreign, serving foreign trade, and short-sea (internal), between the ports of one state. The transportation of goods between different continents is carried out in the vast majority of cases by water.

Inland waterways are natural and artificial. Natural inland waterways are rivers and lakes. On small vessels, goods can be transported even in the upper reaches of large rivers and along their tributaries, even at depths of 0.6 - 0.7 meters. Rafting of roundwood along rivers is economically feasible at even shallower depths. Natural waterways, depending on the possibilities of their use, are navigable or only rafted . The length of rafted rivers significantly exceeds the length of navigable rivers. The river network often does not provide, even after work to improve the conditions of navigation, the possibility of water transportation of goods between important economic hubs and regions. In this case, artificial waterways can be specially created - river waterworks, navigable canals, inter-basin water transport connections.

The advantage of waterways over other modes of transport is the ability to transport bulky goods.

The main disadvantages of cargo transportation on inland waterways are the low speed and seasonality of transportation. The specific resistance to the movement of ships on inland waterways at low speeds is several times less than that of rail cars on rails and, of course, road transport on roads. But with an increase in the speed of the displacement vessels, the resistance grows very quickly. On inland waterways, ships sail at speeds rarely exceeding 20 - 22 km / h. However, the most significant drawback of inland waterways is the seasonality of transport with a break for the winter, when the rivers are covered with ice.

The cost of loading goods onto ships and unloading from them is the greater the share of the total cost of transportation, the smaller the distance between the points of departure and destination. Therefore, long-distance water transport is preferred. However, where there are no roads between the points of departure and destination, and rivers are the only means of communication, water transport runs even over short distances.

The features of inland waterways determine the transportation of mainly bulk bulk and bulk cargoes — coal, ore, non-metallic, building materials. It is these cargoes that make up most of the transport on inland waterways.

In Russia, the largest waterway is the Volga-Baltic .