Germany is considering further temporary exemptions from the Sunday and public holiday driving ban for trucks as water levels on major rivers continue to fall. Federal Transport Minister Steffen Bilger (CDU) said additional exemptions could be needed to help companies transport goods that can no longer be moved, or can only be moved to a limited extent, by inland waterways because of the low water levels.
“The situation remains very tense. There has once again been too little rain, and water levels remain very low,” Bilger told the Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger on Tuesday. Together with his counterparts from Germany’s federal states, he said he was examining how to ensure the necessary flexibility for companies beyond September.
“This also includes further temporary exemptions from the Sunday and public holiday driving ban for trucks, so that goods that cannot be transported, or can only be transported to a limited extent, by waterway because of the low water levels can instead be transported by road,” Bilger said. Most of the existing exemptions were originally due to expire at the end of September.
Bilger stressed that the exemptions were not intended as a permanent solution. “We need these exemptions now to help companies get through this exceptional situation. At the same time, we are creating additional capacity on the railways and, in the long term, we need to ensure that our waterways and shipping are better able to cope with such low-water situations,” the transport minister said. In addition to the Rhine, the Elbe, Danube, Main and Moselle are particularly important for inland waterway transport in Germany.
Heat and drought have caused historically low water levels on some major European rivers this year. The Rhine is essentially no longer navigable along its entire length, according to transport expert Thomas Puls of the German Economic Institute (IW), who spoke to the Rheinische Post on Tuesday.
“Even though there are likely to be a few specialised vessels that can still pass the bottleneck with heavily reduced loads, the Rhine is effectively divided in two. The Middle and Upper Rhine, together with their tributaries, are therefore cut off from the ports of Duisburg and Rotterdam,” Puls said.
The disruption particularly affects solid and liquid bulk goods, which can hardly be shifted to rail and, in some cases, cannot be transported by road at all, Puls said. “This primarily affects solid and liquid bulk goods, as these can hardly be shifted to rail and, in fact, cannot be shifted to road at all,” he said. “Refineries, chemical parks and steelworks are therefore particularly affected. The most prominent example is the BASF plant in Ludwigshafen, which sources around half of its raw materials by inland waterway.”
Despite the transport disruption caused by low water levels, Puls does not expect a new spike in diesel prices as a result. “The resulting price effect is regional and, compared with the increases recently caused by the global diesel shortage, not particularly strong,” the IW expert said.
He added that the impact had already been reflected in prices to some extent because the low-water situation had never completely disappeared. “Moreover, the effect has been priced in for some time, because the low-water situation never completely went away,” Puls said.
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