AMSTERDAM — Amsterdam desires to maneuver a cruise liner terminal out of the guts of the historic capital metropolis as the most recent step in its ongoing battle in opposition to air pollution and hordes of vacationers clogging its slender, cobbled streets.
The Dutch capital is likely one of the many picturesque European cities — from Rome to Venice to Paris — grappling with methods to handle customer numbers which might be once more hovering within the aftermath of shutdowns in the course of the coronavirus pandemic.
Aldermen at Amsterdam’s municipality voted Thursday in favor of a movement calling on town to maneuver the terminal away from its present location near the central rail station.
“A transparent resolution has been made by the council that the cruise (terminal) ought to depart town,” Ilana Rooderkerk, chief of the centrist D66 occasion in Amsterdam, informed The Related Press in an e-mail on Friday. “The municipal government of Amsterdam is now going to work on methods to implement it. In any case, so far as we’re involved, massive ships now not moor within the metropolis heart of Amsterdam.”
Dick de Graaff, director of Cruise Port Amsterdam that operates the terminal within the metropolis heart, informed the AP the corporate had taken notice of the vote and is awaiting the municipality’s subsequent transfer.
“There isn’t any instant closing of the terminal. The council’s name is to relocate the terminal – and we await a comply with up from the alderman on investigations,” he wrote in an e-mail response.
De Graaff mentioned that the Amsterdam terminal expects 114 ships to cease there this yr and 130 subsequent yr.
The vote is the most recent step within the Dutch capital’s long-running marketing campaign to scale back the impression of tourism. Different measures embody banning individuals from smoking weed within the slender streets of its pink gentle district and a proposal to maneuver out of town heart most of the home windows the place scantily-clad prostitutes stand.
Earlier this yr, Amsterdam even launched a marketing campaign titled, “Keep Away,” in opposition to what it described as nuisance tourism.
“Guests will stay welcome, however not in the event that they misbehave and trigger nuisance. In that case we as a metropolis will say: moderately not, keep away,” Deputy Mayor Sofyan Mbarki mentioned in a press release on the time.
For Rooderkerk, banning cruise ships is about extra than simply reining in tourism.
“The polluting cruise doesn’t match the sustainable ambitions of our metropolis,” she tweeted after the vote.
She mentioned that towering cruise ships crusing into Amsterdam additionally stop building of a second bridge over the waterway to hyperlink town with its fast-growing northern suburbs.
Cruise liners usually are not the one mode of transport dealing with restrictions in Amsterdam. The nationwide authorities additionally has introduced plans to chop the variety of flights at Schiphol Airport, the busy aviation hub that serves town.
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Related Press author Mike Corder in The Hague contributed.