Strengths

The essential strengths of inland waterway transport include its outstanding environmental friendliness and safety and its ability to transport large volumes of goods. In addition, guaranteed minimum depths allow a high degree of reliability in transport management and generate significant cost advantages.

Weaknesses

An important weakness of this transport mode particularly relevant to Danube navigation is the fact that waterway transport depends on water levels. The water level determines the unloading depth and the rate of capacity utilisation of the vessels – and hence also the efficiency of the transports.

Opportunities

The Danube waterway is an attractive transport alternative both in economic and macroeconomic terms, particularly against the backdrop of increasing transport volumes in the course of the EU Eastern enlargement and the related capacity bottlenecks in road and rail transport.
In the future, the great amount of free capacities available in water transport will constitute an important opportunity for inland waterway transport to become a partner in intermodal logistics networks.

Obstacles

One obstacle which is highly relevant to Danube navigation is the poor condition of the navigation channel in some sections of the Danube. However, in the context of the development of the trans-European networks most of these nautical weak points on the Danube will be gradually eliminated by 2015.