Gran Colombian Economic Development Ramblings

[The Rock Doctor]

So, with the dramatic increase in BP that came about at the end of 1908, there's less incentive to spend the bucks on seeing through the BP I began in H2/08.  Although I'm seeing a cash-crunch through 1909 and 1910, this is because I'm doing a cash-intensive upgrade to the Gran Colombian army.  Once this is completed, I don't anticipate too much of a squeeze.

Notionally, my economic development plans are like this:

-Coquimbo's IC is completed in H1/09.  That's 1 IC for 0.3 million people, and ought to suffice for a while.

-French Guyana is next on the hit list, and should have an IC done by H1/10.  The ratio is a little more extreme - 1 IC for 0.25 million - but makes sense to me as it's essentially building up the city of Cayenne as an "Haven of Sin" - all your rich citizens are supposed to flock there to spend (and lose) their money in ways that aren't legal back home.

After that, there are no areas of substantial population which are lacking IC.  I can do one of three things:

-Build up the IC in places where the IC/population ratio is still on the lowish side, such as the lesser Antilles

-Resume work on that 26th BP

-Find an underdeveloped external destination for investment. 

Are there other ideas out there?  I'm open to suggestion.

[The Rock Doctor]

Okay, here's a head-scratcher for y'all.

Between the Malebo/Stanley Pool and the town of Matadi, the Congo river falls 270 m along a 350 km stretch.  This renders it impassable to shipping, though it is navigable both below and above this interval.

Question:  What would you imagine the expense of a canal and/or boat lift system, bypassing this stretch of the river, could be?

[Guinness]

It all depends on how big a ship you want to move I guess. The Panama (nee Darien Canal in the Nverse) has locks which rise about 42.5 meters. So since you don't have to go up *and* down, let's call that a round 90 meters.

So you are looking at 3 times the lift height. So if the locks were the same size as the Darien Canal, I'd have to say that the cost might be as much as 3 times that of Darien. There may be some terrain advantages compared to Darien, but the land in the Congo still looks pretty bumpy.

Of course, if your locks are, say 3 times smaller, you might be looking at closer to equal cost.

But that's just an initial SWAG.

[The Rock Doctor]

I think it'd be much smaller locks - river-steamers only, so at most 70 meters x 10 x 4 or thereabouts.  There's no need to run cruisers up the river, just something to allow a steady flow of trade and people.

[Korpen]

There are several huge problems with such a project I think.
First of all, unlike the Panama Canal and most other canals (both inland and ocean) it is not really possible to use existing waterways as there are cataracts almost the entire way. Related to this is the flow rate in the existing canal is quite monstrous, up to 70 000m3/s (or about 9 times the average discharge of the Volga or 5 times the Mississippi) in a canal that for long stretches are only 3-400m wide (granted that average flow is "only" about 42 000m3/s). So I think one would in effect need to dig a canal along the entire length of the cataracts.
A further problem with this is that the river have more or less carved its own narrow valley trough the rock, so along several of the narrower parts of the river it is flaked by cliffs of over 100m (really stunning terrain when looking at pictures).

So I would say "dammed expensive". :)

[Guinness]

Maybe something similar to (but much bigger and more expensive than) this:

http://www.tva.gov/river/navigation/index.htm

As far as flow rates: I think you're right. Most of the way the canal would have to be largely parallel to the river. If this were the case, and had locks at either end of each long section, only some of the river's flow would end up in the canal, with most of the rest running down river.

Of course, if you do that, you've also got to worry about the river overflowing it's banks and ending up in your canal too, I suppose.

[The Rock Doctor]

I figured it'd be a separate canal, rather than an effort to tame the river itself.  A back-of-the-envelope calculation for a 350 km long, 20 x up to 4 m deep canal gives 28,000,000 cubic metres - about 1/8th of Panama's earth movement.  Lots of locks or boat lifts, too.

It probably is too expensive, but I'd like to have a reasonable estimate in hand before I move on to other development options.

[Guinness]

so maybe we say this:

1/8 Darien's earth movement cost, but
1/4 Darien's locks and other complicated bits cost?

Don't know what proportion of the Darien canal is in each category though.

[The Rock Doctor]

Could be something like that.  I'd need to find some decent cost information and convert it to N-verse dollars.

[The Rock Doctor]

Some 1913 figures for historical Panama work:

Canal's locks, dams, and breakwaters:  $86,000,000
Culebra Cut:  $80,400,000 --> ~76,000,000 cubic metres of material moved
Ocean channel dredging:  $31,000,000
Concrete used:  ~8 million tonnes on the "Pacific Locks"

...plus some other costs.  So an extrapolation suggests for the Kongo Bypass:

-Earth-moving costs:  $30,000,000
-Lock/dam costs:  $21,500,000
-Concrete:  ~2 million tonnes

While I'd have no issue with the cash cost, I have no idea how to translate that concrete cost into BP - and, in practical terms, getting that much concrete to the Kongo would be an interesting logistical challenge.

[Walter]

2 million tons? That would be 2,000 BP then. ;D *runs away*

[Guinness]

*smacks Walter*

We could just extrapolate the fortress rules to this. Fortresses cost something on the order of 1/10 the $ cost in BP. So if your project costs $51.50, maybe the BP cost is 5.15? That seems a little low though.

[The Rock Doctor]

It also assumes my cash-cost estimates are reasonable.  They may be low-balled for all I know.

[Walter]

*smacks Walter*

OUCH! You hit me, you evil moderator!! T_T
:D

Personally, I think that with so much doubts about how much it would cost in $$$ and BP, the best thing to do is to just forget about the locks and build a railroad. :)

[maddox]

A common motorized European canal freigther size of that age is the Peniche, 38*5*2 meter. Up to 300 tons cargo

The larger type, the "Kempenaer" is 50*6,6*2,5m up to 600 tons cargo.

For the Congo river, the draughts mentioned here are too deep, but a vessel capable of transporting 2-300 tons sounds perfect.
Size wold be about 60*12*1 then.

IRL, Belgium didn't even try to tame the river, nor bypass the cataracts with canals and locks, but used railways instead.