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In the year 1981, the foreign seaborne trade of the Rhône-Alpes region was made of more than 2.4 million tons of imported or exported goods (crude oil excluded) . Many seaports of unloading or of loading were recorded, to the front of which came Marseille. However, the regional sphere of influence of seaports such as Sète, La Rochelle, Le Havre, Calais, Antwerp or Rotterdam was also a relevant fact. This is especially true (and more particularly in the third and fourth cases) when the additionnal factor of the mean value of the goods is considered, a factor of expression of the traffic structure according to the nature of these goods. The classical analysis of the traffic breakdown between seaports is followed by a further approach, using specialization indexes similar to location quotients. The relative share of these regional flows is then related to their global context, wherein the traffics to or from Rhône-Alpes have a variable local impact.

The increasing world integration of national economics has encouraged a major revolution in maritime transportation. One of the central features of this change has been the containerisation of general cargo traffic. This technique has widened the operational field of shipping companies and has considerably modified the traditional organisation of the transport system. The article analyses the role of these companies in the specific context of overseas exports of containers from the region of Rhône-Alpes. The analysis is based on a survey of flows (of seaward bound movements of containers by road and rail) and on the spatial interpretation of an example of a door-to-door shipment from Beaune to Grand Island (U.S.A.).

Sea-river coasters have appeared on the river Rhône in 1977. They are sea-ships classified in international coastal-trade, whose architecture has been designed to fit transport on navigable rivers of big size. They make transport without break of bulk possible between a river port and any port of the Mediterranean, making unnecessary a break of bulk in a sea port. It river ports, the cost of handling is far cheaper than in sea-ports, and any one who will use sea-river coasters will find it of great economical interest to settle by the river, either in order to use the services of a port managed by a Chamber of Commerce or, even, to create there his own wharehouses and implements. This developping technical improvement may bring, at least, three sorts of consequences : new industrial plants along the rivers Saône and Rhône ; the creation of new dispatch-ports and concentration-ports inside the continent ; the benefit of a more important traffic along the Rhône-Valley.

Ever since the Industrial Revolution the ports of Lyon have been spread out over a distance of approximately 20 kilometres along the Rhône and Saône valleys ; this tendency is being reinforced. An increased specialisation of handling equipment and the trend towards larger and more uniform loads have led to considerable variations in the form and layout of ports and to growing complexity in the types of management - e.g. privately operated ports of limited scope, general purpose ports and riverine industrial zones. Refined oil products and river-dredged sands and gravels represent the two most important forms of traffic. However, both have experienced a marked decline, related to the current recession. As for general cargo, it remains relatively insignificant. Overall, imports greatly exceed exports, although this imbalance is being reduced through the growth of traffic transported by seagoing vessels which now use Lyon.

From its beginning the C.N.R. has been closely controlled by the state and therefore has been directly concerned by the options of economical policy which have occured since 1945. For that reason, to study its achievement comes to study the country planning policy as a whole. At first, the harnessing of the Rhône was turned to hydro-electric production. In the sixties, it became the main achievement of the new industrial geography organisated by the DATAR. Faced with the failure of this industrial policy, former priorities were brought up to date again. Industrialisation is no longer the governing idea and the C.N.R. starts on the Rhine-Rhone project. But recently new prospects have appeared, which will be, in the end, favourable to the industrial development of the Rhône.

The development of the Rhône for international model navigation has been completed since three years. New canals have improved the relations between the Rhône and the leading mediterranean ports of Fos-sur-Mer and Port-de-Bouc. But the works on the Saône are slower. Thus, high tonnage convoies cannot procede much more north than Lyon, whereas the small river barges of Freycinet canals are going down the Rhône and reach the ports of Fos and Sète.