File talk:European Rivers.gif

Summary

As of 24 February 2009, Wikipedia lacked a good map of the main European waterways (canals and navigable rivers), at least of large and medium size. The most reliable source of data that I had found is :

• Voies navigables d'Europe (accès direct au pdf)

Previous discussion was held :

• in French
• in English
• in German

Ahnode (talk) agreed to work on it on 8 March 2009. A schematic representation and a blank map were the options chosen, for convenience, and so that several language versions could be created from it later.

Ahnode (talk) is looking for information on rivers for those parts of Europe that were left out on the map (Dnieper for example, a major river) and several other rivers on Russia's European territory, as he would like to include that information as well, but doesn't know where to look.

Baronnet (talk) 09:44, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

The original source for this kind of information can only be local authorities. For a russian speaker the russian ministry of transport's home page should be a good place to start searching. Guessing from the appearance of the seal, the next step might be http://www.morflot.ru/. If the present classification is not available, a list of size restrictions (width/length) would be sufficient to translate into the classification. The United Nations Economic Commission for Europe document defining the classification is here, p. 157-160 of the file, numbered in print 169-172. Note that draught or tonnage are not defining elements.

In Germany, where I come from, the competent authority is the Federal Waterways and Shipping Administration. On their electronic waterways information system they also have a page with links to other european waterways administrations. It does include cyrillic, but not Russia, though. But they can of course provide the most reliable information possible on the German part of this map. Here is the German administration's federal waterway classification chart. There are even more detailed charts on this page, but the file sizes may choke your computer. There is also a very detailed list that includes changes coming soon and future planning. Note that non-federal waterways are not included in these documents, although there are not many, and none of them has importance. Mostly from that chart I noticed some errors/omissions in the current map version which were in part made in the french chart already. It might therefore be best to use original data for other contries, too, if possible. The above link list might be helpful there. The errata list, north to south:

• Classes should be denoted by roman numbers.
• Ems-Jade Canal is too small even for class I. (This is wrong in the french chart, too.)
• Ems is class V below Papenburg.
• The crossings with grade separation (sorry, no english article about this in WP) at Minden and Magdeburg should be made visible as such, either by using the usual bridge sign or by leaving a small space.
• The Weser class IV waterway extends upward a little way into Fulda, as if it was to reach Kassel. This is not the case, it ends where Werra and Fulda meet.
• Main-Danube Canal still needs to be marked as canal.
• Neckar is missing as a class V waterway up to Plochingen.
• Danube above Kelheim is missing completely. (It is a waterway up to Ulm, although not federal, but Bavarian, non-classified, and not dedicated to general traffic; which all means you have to have a hard to get special permission.)

I'd like to make a suggestion here: The yellow color is not very well visible and has the effect of seeming less important than dark green, for example. The french chart's choice of colors seems better to me, it simply avoids yellow, and it also uses increasing widths. I think these are good ideas, as they suit human perception. And finally, there is a question I'd like to raise: There now are non-navigable rivers, waterways smaller than class I, and waterways not dedicated to general traffic, all depicted in the very same way. At least the first two categories are in effect clearly different. And the extra small waterways are especially interesting for recreational activities. The question is whether it might make sense to distinguish here. In Germany, the 125 km long Lahn waterway is the most important case of such a mainly recreationally used small waterway. And as far as I know, almost all of Britains canals would be in this category, too. --88.66.252.138 15:15, 15 July 2009 (UTC)