Gadkari tours inland waterways system on Mississippi river

Shipping Minister Nitin Gadkari took a study tour of the famous inland waterways system on the Mississippi river in the US, as his ministry gears up for a similar transportation network on rivers such as the Ganga, Brahmaputra and Mahanadi.
The inland waterways system on the Mississippi river has 40,000 km of navigable water covering almost the entire North America and is considered one of the world's most commercially viable inland waterways systems.
The minister toured the system yesterday and studied its structure as well as exchanged views on land port operations with St. Louis Port authorities, the Shipping Ministry said in a statement today.

He discussed the feasibility of similar arrangements in making the Ganga river waterways navigable in an effective and commercially viable manner, it added.
Gadkari examined the towboats pushing barges lashed together to form a big tow as an extremely efficient mode of transportation, moving about 22,500 tonnes of cargo as a single unit.
A single 15-barge tow is equivalent to about 225 railroad cars or 870 tractor-trailer trucks.

If the cargo transported on Mississippi inland waterways each year had to be moved by another mode, it would take an additional 6.3 million rail cars or 25.2 million trucks to carry the load, the officials told Gadkari.

The minister said that like in the US, central government will manage the inland waterways in India.
"We can maintain a draft of two and half to three meters as in the Mississippi river inland waterways. Indian river waterways can be operational all round the year unlike in the US where they remain closed for some time during a year," Gadkari said.
In the context of inland waterways in India, he said the ability to move more cargo per shipment will make the barge transport both fuel efficient as well as environmentally advantageous.
Carbon dioxide emissions from water transportation will be much less as compared with rail transportation, he added.

Gadkari said there were plans to promote cargo traffic in
a big way on the Ganga river.
"Our experiment to transport Maruti cars from Varanasi to Haldia has been successful. Now few other automobile companies like Mahindra have also come forward," he said.
The minister said it will be gamechanger and transportation through water will bring down the prices of Maruti cars in North East and West Bengal by Rs 3,000 to Rs 4,000 each.
The minister said transportation of steel, cement and fertilisers would also be started soon.
"At present 20 lakh tonne of cargo is moved through Ganga which will be expanded to 200 lakh tonne of cargo by 2018, and we are setting up three multi-modal hubs on Ganga."

As part of plans to develop waterways and make the Ganga river navigable, Gadkari last month laid the foundation stone of a Rs 211-crore multi-modal terminal in Varanasi.
The phase 1 of the multi-modal terminal would be built at a cost of Rs 211 crore and would be ready by August 2018.
The terminal is part of Rs 4,200-crore Jal Marg Vikas project to enable commercial navigation of vessels with capacity of 1,500-2,000 DWT Tonnage from Varanasi to Haldia.
There are plans to promote seaplanes on Ganga as well.