Unrealised waterways projects

A novel idea

In the early 20th century, ideas and plans were developed to build various shipping routes through Switzerland. The vision of Switzerland as a hub for inland waterway transport in Europe played a key role. The underlying idea was to overcome the country’s small size by acting as a hub for all of Europe’s shipping traffic.

This impulse was spurred on by the particular conditions and developments of the time: advances in shipbuilding, electrification and by extension the damming of rivers which could also be used for shipping, the construction of inland waterways abroad and the assumption that high economic growth would continue unabated.

Designs

One pioneer in developing waterways in Switzerland was the engineer Rudolf Gelpke, who presented his vision in 1907. Specifically, his design envisaged the following:

• Making the High Rhine navigable from Basel to Lake Constance
• Connecting the Rhine and Lake Zurich by a canal of even height
• Connecting Lake Geneva and Lake Constance (“Transhelvetic Canal”)
• Connecting Lake Maggiore to the navigable river Po
• A canal between Lake Constance and the Danube

Looking at Switzerland’s topography, it is clear that the Alps are an obstacle to shipping routes. Accordingly, the engineers developed specific potential solutions.

In 1907, the engineer Pietro Caminada presented a revolutionary idea for traversing the Alps, known as the Splügen Canal. He wanted to allow cargo ships to navigate over the Splügen Pass in a canal. Had this design been implemented, ships would have overcome an altitude difference of almost 1,000 metres. To achieve this, he developed a special system of sloping canals contained in closed off pipes with locks in between. The design even involved a tunnel. Caminada envisaged a traversable waterway from the North Sea to the Mediterranean, which would have stretched from the port city of Genoa via Alessandria, Milan, Como, Chiavenna, the Splügen Pass and Lake Constance to Basel, and from there would have flowed via the Rhine to the North Sea.

Gelpke was also occupied with the question of how to cross the Alps. In 1916, he floated the idea of “a passage over the Gotthard massif navigable by ship”. If this “Swiss Rhine-Gotthard waterway” had been implemented, it would have worked as an “actual southward extension of the Rotterdam-Basel Rhine route”. Specifically, Gelpke proposed that the Reuss river be canalised and made passable by large vessels through Lake Zug or via Lucerne up to the end point of Flüelen, where it would then be possible to transfer cargo to the Gotthard railway. In turn, there was a second port of transshipment from train to ship planned for Biasca.

The Transhelvetic Canal project also bears mentioning. One part of this project – the Canal d’Entreroches – was built between 1638 and 1648 and used until 1829 for commercial shipping traffic between Cossonay and Yverdon.

The idea of a complete connection between the Rhine and Rhône, via Lake Biel and Lake Neuchâtel, was then also presented in 1907 and, in December 1947, the federal government even played a role in undertaking additional studies.

In 1956, 1965 and 1971, there followed three more studies by the federal government, each of which hammered home more clearly than the last that the canal would be too expensive, impractical and unprofitable. It was not until 1996 that the federal government definitively scrapped the project. On the regional level, however, it continued to live on. Up until 2006, there was a law in the canton of Vaud prohibiting the building of structures that might obstruct the passage of ships along the Transhelvetic Canal.

The Zurich region was also affected by the planning of new waterways. In 1912, Rudolf Gelpke presented two potential variants: via Aare and Limmat into the city or up the Glatt to Oerlikon or Schwerzenbach. The latter variant would have necessitated a tunnel through the Zürichberg.

There were also ideas about building waterways in neighbouring countries, which would have played a key role in the Swiss waterborne transport system. The “Lake Maggiore – Po” connection proposed by Gelpke in 1907 was intended to improve connections between Italy and the Adriatic, and the expansion of the Rhone would have played a key role in connecting the Transhelvetic Canal with the Mediterranean. Two other designs for connecting Lake Constance and the Danube were also presented, which would have facilitated a new connection in Switzerland towards the east.

Within Switzerland, the Rheinau – Schaffhausen connection was also discussed for the purpose of circumnavigating the Rhine Falls, for which several variants were proposed.

Failure

Next to nothing came of the many proposed projects or variants. This failure can be attributed to a number of factors. Due to Switzerland’s central location within Europe, the waterway projects would also have required investment by neighbouring countries: the Transhelvetic Canal would only have had a chance of success if France had made the Rhone navigable right up to the Swiss border, while the expansion of the High Rhine would have required Germany’s cooperation. The two world wars ruled out both of these preconditions. After the Second World War, interest in these projects began to decline, losing popularity in favour of other challenges, such as national roadbuilding. Starting in the early 1950s, the protection of nature and cultural heritage became yet another major obstacle, aside from the fact that the costs were overall too high.