Again, “no” to the Sublagunare

For years, the project to build a “sublagunare”, a rapid transit link under the Lagoon of Venice, has appeared regularly in the City Council’s official documents. The outgoing Mayor, Paolo Costa, and his deputy for public works, Roberto D’Agostino, haven’t missed the chance to push this project, which they claim is viable.

In August, 1999, a “rump” meeting of the City Cabinet (six present, five absent) approved the PRUSST proposal (ostensibly for “sustainable development”), whose most important element was a rapid transit link under the Lagoon, from Venice Airport in mainland Tessera, to the island of Murano (where goods for Venice would be transferred onto boats), and finishing in Venice itself, at the Arsenal. The sublagunare. The cost at the time: 220 million lire (about 115,000 Euros).

The other parts of the PRUSST proposal have fortunately disappeared without a trace (or perhaps we are poorly informed), but the sublagunare has resurfaced. The mayor and other proponents claim the city can’t live without its purported benefits. But we need to take a closer look at the impact of this project.

The project’s proponents claim that it will reduce damage from motorboat wakes, in particular from those carrying merchandise. These wakes erode the city’s foundations. The mayor’s proposal, however, would require an extra stage for goods traffic. Lorries now transfer their loads onto boats at the edge of the city. Under their plans, goods would first be transferred onto the rapid-transit line, then onto the same types of boats at Murano – which is further from the city centre than the current loading zone. Will costs and damage be reduced?

The passengers brought by the rapid transit link into Venice would have a major impact on the city’s structure. Proponents calculate that their sublagunare would bring 200 to 300 passengers every 7 to 8 minutes, 1600 to 2000 every hour to Fondamente Nuove, an area that currently has few tourists. However, the narrow alleys here allow little room for so many visitors to easily move into the city, disrupting the neighbourhood. A new terminal would be needed, with negative consequences for the cityscape.

While the project is supposed to reinvigorate the city, it is not clear how many of Venice’s 65,000 residents would use actually this transit link to the mainland. Residents in the neighbourhoods of Dorsoduro, Santa Croce and San Polo would continue to go to the closer and more convenient train and bus stations – as would those in Cannaregio near to the train station. Thousands of students and workers take trains and buses to Venice every day. Would many of them switch? An improved regional train system is now under construction, and thus should be running before the sublagunare is built. Moreover, most university building are near the train and bus stations.

One thing is clear, though: the new subway would provide one more incentive for the type of “fast food” tourism that is taking over Venice. Tourists overwhelmed the city for the fateful 1989 Pink Floyd concert and on New Year’s Eve in 2000 and 2001. Tourists crowd St. Mark’s Square and Rialto Bridge many of the year. The city needs to manage and diversify its overwhelming tourist flows – not encourage new tourists.

With the greater disruption it would create – and the inevitable real estate speculation in the neighbourhoods near its terminal – the sublagunare would provide yet more incentives for Venetians to leave their city and move to the mainland.

Finally, proponents claim that the system’s construction is feasible. We should be wary of its impacts on the Lagoon of Venice, a complex, natural system. Construction would dig through the sediment under the Lagoon, including the “caranto”, the compact layer of clay on which the city’s foundations ultimately rest.

Instead of this damaging project, the city should modernise and improve its current system of waterborne transport, an option that will cost far less. The city’s transport company has ignored this option, and instead prefers to invest in an infrastructure with high costs, long construction time, uncertain economic returns and damaging impacts on the entire city.

Proposals for a sublagunare have been bandied about for at least 50 years. We remember well that the city – with the help of concerned voices across Europe – blocked the devastating proposal to hold Expo 2000 in Venice and its plan to drive a rapid transit link under the Lagoon.

Today, as then, Italia Nostra is convinced that a sublagunare would damage Venice’s fragile and unique urban structure. It would not “save” and “modernise” our city: instead, the project is only the latest attempt to make Venice like mainland cities, cancelling forever the idea of Venice as a city on water, with its own measure of space and time.

Italia Nostra
Venice Chapter
President: Alvise Benedetti

February 2005