The project Douro's Inland Waterway 2020 was born to improve the river Douro's inland waterway navigability conditions, strengthening its safety, optimizing its communication’s system and creating new possibilities for companies to use the waterway as a mean of transportation.

• Safety

Regarding safety, two segments of the river will be corrected so more vessels can navigate safely and improvements in 5 sluices will be made.

• Communication

One of the investments will be the settlement of a RIS (River Information System), built specifically for Douro. This will endow the vessels with electronic and GPS navigation means, creating a traffic control system that will help improving the meteorological activity, managing the intermodal and port activities and also enabling online connection to the local authorities. 

• Means of transportation

To complement the operators’ already existing offer, the project aims to increase vessels circulation, benefiting not only the region’s touristic potential but also turning it to an option for the transportation of commodities – a more viable, efficient, rentable and sustainable solution.

The main goal of Douro's Inland Waterway 2020, a 5 year and 74-million-euro project, is to transform Douro in a safe and commercially connected waterway, that contributes to the 2020 European purpose for transportations.

The project’s first phase has been already approved, with the duration of 2 years, in a 4.7-million-euro investment. APDL took on, since June 2015, Douro’s inland waterway, previously under the Instituto da Mobilidade e dos Transportes responsibility.

The promotion, development and preservation of the infrastructure and equipment, such as the administration and coordination of the waterway’s intervention is now responsibility of APDL, which also has a new consulting committee - Observatório da Navegabilidade do Douro – for the waterway related questions.

Believing in the growth potential, not only in the recreational navigation sector, but also in the commodity transportation, the investment in the enlargement and deepening of the channel in some segments is essential. This growth potential will serve not only the economic operators, but also all the population in Douro River’s adjacent areas.