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passenger fleet have a total seating capacity of roughly 18,000. Most of the fleet cargo capacity is allocated for use on the Oder and Oder-Vistula system. The fleet, largely dieselized, has undergone substantial modernization and as a result is adequate in size and capacity for current traffic demands. A total of 14 principal shipyards, including a new yard at Kozle, and 37 minor yards adequately supply and maintain the domestic fleet; they also produce some vessels for export, mostly to the Eastern European Communist countries and to Indonesia. Poland is a major contributor to the CEMA plan for standardizing inland vessel designs and operations.
About 75% of the commercial waterway freight is handled by tug-pushed or tug-towed dumb barges. Most of the remainder is shipped via 500- to 600-ton self-propelled barges which operate only on the Oder and Oder-Vistula waterway. On the Vistula system 100- to 300-ton craft are most common. On all waterways, tug and dumb-barge operations are limited to conventional tows of one to four units asserts or one to two units pushed in line-ahead formation. Pusher operations are now practiced on all principal routes (Figure 4).
FIGURE 4. Pusher operation on the Oder river. The tug is pushing two 600-ton dumb barges. (U/OU)
Aided by the variety of shore-based and floating navigational aids, two-way navigation is normally practices on all the principal routes. Round-the-clock operations are practiced on the Oder as far upstream as Wroclaw. Elsewhere on the principal routes navigation is limited to a maximum of 18 hours per day.
The principal traffic interruption factors are ice and seasonable water level variations. Ice conditions interrupt navigation for up to 90 days annually between mid-December and mid-March. Icebreakers operate on the lower Oder and Vistula; army-engineer blasting is also used to break jams and prevent buildups. The lack of sufficient retention reservoirs, most apparent on the Vistula, results in abrupt fluctuations in the water level. Other traffic interruption factors are spring floods, the more intensive of which may halt traffic for periods of 2 weeks, and fog on the lower Oder and Vistula, which can suspend operations temporarily for short periods in November and December.
Insufficient depths remain a major operating problem on the middle Vistula and require the light-loading of barges by 40% of payload capacity except at high water. Other problems are insufficient numbers are high-capacity cargo-handling equipment, limited amounts of covered storage, and inefficiency in water-rail trans-shipping. The comparative imbalance of operating conditions on the Oder and Vistula prohibit a countrywide interchange of craft between systems.
The Ministry of Shipping has jurisdiction over waterway transport policy and operations. Administration is delegated to the ministry's Department of Inland Navigation, and departmental directives are implemented and executed by the Wroclaw-headquartered Union of Inland Navigation and River Shipyards. Construction and maintenance is largely planned, coordinated, and administered by the Central Office of Water Economy; sub offices of 11 District Water Administrations manage the waterways within their geographic regions.
The slow development of waterway transportation in the past has been the result of its low priority in the national budget. Despite this, considerable fleet expansion and modernization has been achieved, modest advances made in waterway regulation and lock enlargements, and significant port improvements accomplished. Partial regulation of the lower Vistula was accomplished in 1969 by the Wloclawek lock and dam, one of nine installations scheduled for that section of the river. Oder regulation has progressed significantly faster, and construction projects underway are expected to provide year-round river stabilization upstream to Raciborz by 1980. The new river-maritime port at Police on the Oder is operational, and expansion of Warsaw port at nearby Zeran continues, as does fleet development in the form of improvement of its mobility and capacity through use of standard-design pusher tugs and barges. Experiments are being conducted toward the eventual inauguration of 24-hour shipping on all principal waterway routes.
Long-range plans through 1985 include complete regulation of the Vistula and Oder and extension of
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APPROVED FOR RELEASE: 2009/06/16: CIA-RDP01-00707R000200070025-1
