Amsterdam city council supports moving cruise ships out of city center

The Amsterdam city council supports moving the cruise ship terminal out of the city center. A majority supported a motion by D66, PvdA, and GroenLinks to relocate the Passenger Terminal Amsterdam (PTA), AT5 reports.

According to D66 leader Ilana Rooderkerk, the PTA does not fit with the city’s sustainability ambitions, and the cruise ships would make a second bridge over the IJ to Amsterdam Noord impossible. “Cruise ships in the city center also do not fit in with Amsterdam’s assignment to reduce the number of tourists,” she said. “In other words, Amsterdam sails better without a cruise.”

Amsterdam politicians have been talking about moving the PTA, which opened in 2000 and cost 40 million euros to build, since 2015. The massive ships are bad for the air quality, and tourists who enter Amsterdam by ship tend to spend less in the city.

Last year, Mayor Femke Halsema said that cruise ship tourists tend to only spend a few hours in the city, eat at international chains, and have no time to visit a museum. “That means that they consume our city but mean little to the city,” she said, according to the broadcaster.