Inland waterway transport can absorb increases in freight transport by resorting to existing capacities and therefore needs only small investments in infrastructure and ports compared to other modes of transport.

Compared to road and rail transport, inland navigation has the lowest capital expenditure requirements for the maintenance and improvement of the infrastructure, as demonstrated by the comparison of infrastructure costs between transport modes in Austria.
Moving 1000 tonne-kilometres requires an investment of 1€ in waterway transport, 1.83€ in road transport and 6.57€ in rail transport.