The Danube waterway transport as ‘extended leg’ of maritime transport across ship locks – case study: ship lock iron gate 1

Abstract

The ship locks are most important infrastructural objects for traffic and transport on Danube navigable network. In operational sense they are the obstacles for inland navigation. It means they limit the Danube waterway transport and fleet capacities. The ship locks in the function of using inland navigation on the Danube River present in first part of this paper. The number of ship locks on the Danube River are following: the Upper Danube (15 dams each with two standardized locks with one lock chamber), the Middle Danube (1 dam with two standardized locks with one lock chamber and 1 dam with two standardized locks each with two lock chambers) and the Lower Danube (1 dam with two standardized locks with one lock chamber). The authors research the individual ship lock capacity for 12 ship locks, mainly on the Upper Danube, depending upon the state of lock chamber and performances of each locks, kind of inland vessels/barge tows and upstream and downstream navigation. In second part of this paper considers the restoration of Serbian ship locks: Iron Gate 1. The Serbian ship lock on right bank of Danube River operate in pair by the Romanian ship lock on left bank of Danube River. Their capacities analyze depending on the distribution of vessels/barge tows in front of dams and in back of dams (upstream and downstream navigation).