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Transport Economy : Kosi Canal Waterway
By Dr. AB Thapa
The 1997 Kosi Study Agreement signed between the Governments of Nepal and India to conduct detailed study of the 165 km long Kosi Navigation Canal linking Chatra in Nepal with the seaport through Ganges, Bhagirathi and Hooghly has paved the way to herald a new age of cooperation in the field of promoting trade among the countries in South Asia in general, and Nepal and India in particular. The proposed Kosi canal waterway could also help to expand the volume of Indian trade with the Tibetan Autonomous Region of China. At present the Government of India is requesting Nepal to provide transit facility through Nepal for its trade with Tibet. The detailed study of the Kosi Navigation Canal is going be a part of the feasibility study of the mammoth Kosi Dam Project.
Inland Water Transportation is The Cheapest
The coefficient of friction on water is very small. One horse power can pull 4,000 kg on water while on road and rail, it can move only 150 kg and 500 kg respectively. In the countries in Europe and America the inland water transport has established itself as the cheapest mode of transportation. In the USA, where various modes of transportation freely competing with one another are equally developed the inland water transport has been found to be 5 times cheaper than the railway transportation and 21 times cheaper than the road transportation.
The USA had about 25000 miles of internal commercial navigable channels in 1968, of which 15000 miles provided operating depths of nine feet or more. The nine-foot draft is considered standard for barge and towing industry operations in the USA. In 1966 about 490 million tons of freight was carried by all kinds of river ships in the USA.
A Unified European Network was agreed with regard to the whole of Europe that category IV waterways should be the standard link between river basins. This category should be able to accommodate 1350-1500 ton vessels. The locks should have a minimum depth of 3.5 m over the sill.
A comparative study of inland water transport cost for small rivers vis-à-vis road transportation cost on region-wise basis made in the former USSR shows that by comparison with inland water transportation the road transportation was almost 10 times costly in Kuibshev region. It is about 4 times expensive in Moscow region.
In 1967 some 450 million tons of the cargoes were carried by all kinds of river-ships in the former Soviet Union.
It is presented in a report published very recently by the Government of Bangladesh that the volume of freight carried by water in Bangladesh stands at approximately 56 million ton/year. The water transportation charges are said to be less than 10% of the corresponding charges by road or railway.
According to a study conducted on behalf of the German State Railway to move one ton of goods in Germany one kilometer, it costs 14 pfenings by rail and 29 pfenings by road, but just 4 pfenings by inland waterway. It shows that the inland water transportation is the cheapest by comparison with other modes of transportation.
Safety And Reliability
Apart from being a very cheap mode of transportation, the inland water transportation is the safest and the most reliable form of transportation with very little risks of pilferage, loss and damage of goods during the carriage. Such type of transportation is very convenient for moving the goods and equipments that are too big and heavy. There are other inherent advantages of the inland water transportation. Some of them are listed below:
( i) Ability to open market for otherwise non-marketable commodities.- It would thus be possible for Nepal to deliver at low transportation cost industrial raw materials like coal, ores, crude oil etc. from Haldia port and other parts of India. Similarly it would be possible to export construction materials like the sand, gravel, stones etc. from Nepal. In the USA in 1966 river barges had carried about 52 million tons of sand and gravel.
( ii) Stimulates industrial production. - Past experiences of other countries show that the development of inland waterway would stimulate industrial production.
(iii) Ability to attract production facilities to water-oriented locations in the interior and thereby aid in their dispersal from the costal congested areas, as a result the waterway could help to open up exciting possibilities for the growth of big industries inside Nepal at locations far away from the seaports.
(iv) Ability to fit services into production line processes for raw materials movement.
Surge in Building Navigation Canals
The primary physical restriction is that vessels cannot travel through water at speeds possible for road vehicles or railway wagons. Waterways must provide larger tonnage units than those possible on road or rail in order to be competitive. Modern waterway engineering, therefore, is directed towards providing channels suitable for larger vessels to travel faster by reducing delays at locks or from darkness and other natural hazards. In the last century existing small canals were upgraded and many new canals much larger in size were built in Europe. In Germany the 467 km long Mittelland Canal was opened in 1938 that completed the east-west link in a system of about 11,265 km of inland waterways, extending from the Dortmund-Ems Canal east of the Rhine to the Elbe north of Magdeburg. The Nord-Sud Canal (or Elbe-Seitenkanal) was completed in 1976. This canal leaves the Elbe about 20 miles above Hamburg and, running south, joins the Mittelland Canal near Wolfsburg and shortening the route between Hamburg and the Ruhr by 134 miles. The Main-Danube canal connecting the Rhine with the Black Sea was completed in 1992.
France's many of the low capacity canals are being raised to the 1,350-ton standard. A major development planned in the 1970s in cooperation with West Germany was the construction to this standard of the North Sea-Mediterranean waterway via the canalized Rhone and Rhine rivers. The Rhine has been navigable between Basel and Rheinfelden since 1934. In The Netherlands the extensive canal system based on large natural rivers and serving the ports of Rotterdam and Amsterdam has required relatively small improvement. The Juliana Canal was built in 1935 to bypass the Meuse River between Roermond and Maastricht and it was further improved after Second World War. The Twente Canal opened in 1936.
In the former Soviet Union navigation played a major role in the country's economy. The Volga-Don Canal, 63 miles in length, was completed in 1952. The Moscow-Volga Canal, built between 1932 and 1937, runs 80 miles from the Volga to the Moskva River at Moscow. Among other important navigation canals are the 127-mile canal connecting different systems enabling to link Baltic with the Black Sea, the White Sea- Baltic Canal built between 1931 and 1933.
Landlocked Nepal and Underdevelopment
All those involved in the economic development of Nepal agree that the poverty, backwardness and under-development of our country to a great extent have resulted from our country being landlocked. However, Nepal is not the only landlocked country in the world. Even the developed countries like the Switzerland and Austria are also landlocked. Those countries were able to find a good solution to clear this difficult natural hurdle. They succeeded in opening inland waterways suited for the operation of large river vessels that provided them unhindered access to the seaport. There are big river harbours inside those countries to handle incoming and outgoing goods transported by waterways. Those countries do not have to worry about the maximum allowable size of the goods in transit. There are always restriction on maximum allowable size when the goods are transported by other modes of surface transportation. Water-borne transportation is also the cheapest mode of transportation. It would not be an exaggeration to say that those countries have changed their geography. Now-a-days the costal river carriers (CRC vessels) can directly link these countries with the costal ports of the rest of Europe.
Nepal Also Could Change Its Geography
Nepal had shown keen interest since 1967 to develop inland waterway through India that would provide a seaport outlet for our country. In several occasions our country had approached India to allow to develop such waterway. But Nepal never got an affirmative nod from India The year 1997 was, however, a turning point. India accepted our proposal to develop the Kosi waterway. They endorsed our proposal to conduct detailed feasibility study of about 165 km long navigation canal linking Chatra in Nepal with the Ganges river in India near Kursella. The 1997 Indo-Nepal agreement to conduct jointly a detailed feasibility study of the Kosi Navigation Canal to be ultimately developed as a part of the Kosi High Dam Project is indeed a landmark event. The proposed navigation canal could open up boundless new opportunities for rapid expansion of our country's trade and industrial development activities.
Like Austria and Switzerland, we also could change the geography of Nepal. The groundwork for this highly challenging task for our country has already been laid. Unfortunately most of our countrymen even including our intellectuals are still unaware of this vast potential. There is a great danger that our country could trample on this great opportunity because of the lack of our clear vision of Nepal’s development perspectives.
A Lesson To Be Learnt
We can draw extremely valuable lessons for our Kosi canal navigation planning from the recent and past experiences of the European countries. Unfortunately India, in the past, did not pay attention to new developments taking place in the field of canal navigation. As a result, the navigation component of the Durgapore barrage project ended in a complete failure. This project taken up for construction as late as 1950s was under the Damodar Valley Corporation, an Indian model of the famous TVA of the USA. The left bank canal, 120 km in length, was designed to permit navigation by small barges only 250 ton in capacity. It had been established since a long time that such small barges would have difficulties to compete with the railways. Apart from it, the poundage too was very small. There are 22 locks in a stretch of just 161 km. Because of these drawbacks, the canal has remained unused for navigation. Fortunately now it seems India has realized her mistakes. Those matters related with economy have been fully taken care of in the design of the navigation component of the recently built Farakka barrage.
The navigation component of the Farakka barrage has been designed paying full attention to the present global trends with respect to size. The bed width of the 37.5 km long feeder canal is 150 m. The channel depth at full supply level is 6 m. The navigation lock has two chambers, each 25.15 meters wide and 180.7 meters long. The lock system is adequate for barge upto 1,500 ton capacity. Provision has been made for adding a second lock at future stage.
While conducting the feasibility study of the Kosi navigation canal we should take full advantage of the vast experience the Continental Europe has gained in the field of inland navigation. We should not allow the Durgapore navigation canal mistake to be once again repeated. The size of the Kosi navigation canal and its related structures such as the lock system should be determined in conformity with the size already adopted by India in design of the Farakka barrage navigation system which corresponds to the recommended size in Europe.
(Dr. Thapa writes on water resources)
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