Rhône–Rhine Canal

The Rhône–Rhine Canal (French: Canal du Rhône au Rhin, pronounced [kanal dy ʁon o ʁɛ̃]) is one of the important watershed canals of the French waterways, connecting the Rhine to the Saône and the Rhône and thereby the North Sea and the Mediterranean. As built, the canal was made up of four distinct sections:

the branche Sud or southern branch, 224 km (139 mi) from the Saône just north of Saint-Jean-de-Losne to the Île Napoléon basin and junction just east of Mulhouse;

the branche Nord or northern branch, 134 km (83 mi) from the Mulhouse junction to the Dusuzeau basin at the port of Strasbourg;

the 22 km (14 mi) long Canal de Huningue, from the junction to the Rhine at Huningue, just north of the Swiss port of Basle;

and the 10 km (6.2 mi) long Belfort branch, which when built was to be the first section of the Canal de Montbéliard à la Haute-Saône.

Developments for high-capacity navigation in the second half of the 20th century thoroughly transformed this Y-shaped system. When the first lock was built on the Grand Canal d'Alsace at Kembs, a new cut was also excavated from Kembs to Niffer, and the rest of the Canal de Huningue was upgraded from here to the docks at Mulhouse. A 3-km-long section of the former Canal de Huningue, from Niffer to Kembs, is maintained and gives access to a boat harbour, while the remainder of that canal to Basel has been closed, and the terminal basin transformed into a whitewater canoeing course.

Most of the northern branch was abandoned, and in the early 1980s the A36 motorway sliced through the canal embankment east of Mulhouse. Two sections were maintained and new cuts built from the Rhine to make them accessible:

the Colmar Canal or embranchement de Colmar, 23 km (14 mi) long, from a new lock at Neuf-Brisach to Colmar;

and a 34 km (21 mi) lateral canal starting from a new entrance lock at Rhinau and finishing in the basins of the port of Strasbourg.

A further major upheaval, planned from the 1960s, was construction of a high-capacity waterway to connect the Rhône-Saône corridor with the main European waterway network. This project was abandoned by Environment Minister Dominique Voynet in 1997.

The section from Mulhouse to Neuf-Brisach is abandoned, while the 29 km section between Artzenheim and Friesenheim has been partially restored by Alsace Region, but works were stopped in 2009 for financial reasons.