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Locals first: Venice makes tourists wait for water buses

Visitors to Venice this summer will be forced to wait patiently to board water buses in the tourist-clogged canal city after authorities there said locals must be allowed to get on first.

Published: 7 April 2016 14:43 CEST
Locals first: Venice makes tourists wait for water buses
Locals first: tourists will soon have to wait in line to board a water bus in Venice. Photo: Lauchlin Wilkinson

In a bid to make one of the most famous cities in the world more “liveable”, only those with a ‘Venezia Unica Oro’, or gold card, proving they’re Venetian, will be given priority boarding, La Repubblica reported.

All others must waited patiently – in a different queue.

The measure will be put in place at eight vaporetto, or water bus, stops from June, initially as a trial.

“This is a way of saving the city and making it more liveable,” mayor Luigi Brugnaro said after the project was given the green light at a meeting with Actv, the company that manages local public transport, on Wednesday.

Tourists have long provoked ire among the 55,000 residents in Venice’s historic centre, who are forced to share the ferries with them – and their bulky suitcases – on their commute.

So needless to say, they support the move to make visitors wait in line.

“Tourists sit with their suitcases in their arms while we are forced to stand,” wrote one commuter on Facebook.

The water buses ferried some 70 million passengers around last year. The city itself attracts some 20 million visitors a year. Over the recent Easter weekend alone, 300,000 people came.

The queue plan will be in place at water bus stops including Canal Grande, Santa Chiara, Santa Lucia e Rialto train station, as well as San Marco and the islands of Lido, Murano and Burano.

“A worker who wants to get home after spending eight hours in the heat of the glass factory in Murano, or a mother who has to rush to collect her child from nursery, should be able to do so without huddling together with coach parties, or with the risk of delay,” the mayor added.

Whether the plan works as intended remains to be seen.

Similar initiatives by previous mayors have either failed, or been shrugged off as a joke.

Giorgio Orsoni, who resigned amid a corruption scandal in 2014, tried to give residents in Rialto priority access, but scrapped the plan because there was not enough space on the pier.

Authorities will also need to be careful not to test tourists’ patience too much, especially as privileged locals with gold cards already pay €6 less for a water bus ride.

VENICE

Italy to pay €57m compensation over Venice cruise ship ban

The Italian government announced on Friday it would pay 57.5 million euros in compensation to cruise companies affected by the decision to ban large ships from Venice's fragile lagoon.

Published: 3 December 2021 17:41 CET
A cruise ship in St Mark's Basin, Venice.
The decision to limit cruise ship access to the Venice lagoon has come at a cost. Photo: Miguel Medina/AFP

The new rules, which took effect in August, followed years of warnings that the giant floating hotels risked causing irreparable damage to the lagoon city, a UNESCO world heritage site.

READ ALSO: Venice bans large cruise ships from centre after Unesco threat of ‘endangered’ status

Some 30 million euros has been allocated for 2021 for shipping companies who incurred costs in “rescheduling routes and refunding passengers who cancelled trips”, the infrastructure ministry said in a statement.

A further 27.5 million euros – five million this year and the rest in 2022 – was allocated for the terminal operator and related companies, it said.

The decision to ban large cruise ships from the centre of Venice in July came just days before a meeting of the UN’s cultural organisation Unesco, which had proposed adding Venice to a list of endangered heritage sites over inaction on cruise ships.

READ ALSO: Is Venice really banning cruise ships from its lagoon?

Under the government’s plan, cruise ships will not be banned from Venice altogether but the biggest vessels will no longer be able to pass through St Mark’s Basin, St Mark’s Canal or the Giudecca Canal. Instead, they’ll be diverted to the industrial port at Marghera.

But critics of the plan point out that Marghera – which is on the mainland, as opposed to the passenger terminal located in the islands – is still within the Venice lagoon.

Some aspects of the plan remain unclear, as infrastructure at Marghera is still being built. Meanwhile, smaller cruise liners are still allowed through St Mark’s and the Giudecca canals.

Cruise ships provide a huge economic boost to Venice, but activists and residents say the ships contribute to problems caused by ‘overtourism’ and cause large waves that undermine the city’s foundations and harm the fragile ecosystem of its lagoon.

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