Amsterdam shelves plan for new bridges over IJ river

Amsterdam seems to have shelved its plans for two new bridges over the IJ river. The 135 million euros reserved for the bridges have been used for other purposes in the city’s budget. However, the land intended for the construction of the bridges will remain reserved for that purpose, a municipal spokesperson said to Parool.

Despite the reallocation of the bridges’ funds, they remain an explicit wish of the municipality, traffic alderman Melanie van der Horst said to the newspaper. However, the municipality first wants to fully commit to other large projects, like extending the Noord/Zuid metro line and a metro line between Sloterdijk and Central Station.

“When the spring memorandum is presented in May, more will become clear about the planning of the bridges over the IJ. All future investments in large infrastructure projects will then be weighed up to see how the limited financial resources can best be used for the entire city,” Van der Horst said, according to the newspaper. In the meantime, the city is investigating whether more ferries can be used in the future to keep Amsterdam Noord accessible, the goal of the bridges.

And Amsterdam Noord, where the city is also focusing a large part of its housing construction, desperately needs more accessibility, according to the newspaper. The ferries are reaching pre-pandemic crowdedness already, and the number of passengers is increasing by the day.

The shelving of the planned bridges has Canan Uyar, a PvdA member of the district committee Noord, very concerned. “This is going in the wrong direction. There is focus on ferries, while Noord continues to grow and clearly can’t get by on ferries alone. A bridge has to be built because Noord, and therefore the city as a whole, needs a structural solution,” Uyar said to the newspape