Venice traffic lights to control pedestrians in St Mark’s Square
ITALY: Venice is planning to introduce a system of traffic lights to control pedestrian access to St Mark’s Square as the city struggles to contend with the pressures of mass tourism.
The plan was outlined by the mayor, Luigi Brugnaro, as he unveiled €25 million (NZ$42m) worth of infrastructure projects to improve the quality of life in the city centre. The traffic control system, which includes smart cameras capable of measuring the number of people present and a mobile phone app to provide visitors with advance warning if the area is getting overcrowded, is due to be implemented this year.
‘‘We won’t prevent anyone from coming in, but we will try to slow down the flow,’’ Brugnaro told reporters. ‘‘If we start counting at 5am, we can calculate the difference between people coming in and people leaving and fix a limit for maximum capacity.’’
Officials say 65,000 people is a rough guide for the capacity of the square, described by Napoleon as ‘‘the finest drawing room in Europe’’.
In the busiest months, the square is swamped by visitors with long queues waiting to enter St Mark’s Basilica, the Campanile tower or the Palazzo Ducale, and others tucking into picnics.
‘‘When the limit has been reached, I will stop the day-trippers first and inform them that the square is full and that there is a priority system based on bookings. That way I don’t violate European laws on the free movement of people,’’ Brugnaro said.
Residents and commuters will be issued with special passes, and tourists who have booked to sleep in the centre will also have priority. ‘‘It will all be explained on the web,’’ the mayor said.
The current system for counting the number of visitors to the square needs updating, however. ‘‘A detail is missing for the system to work: software that can deliver the data in real time, because at the moment the figures come in after a quarter of an hour,’’ the Corriere della Sera newspaper reported.
‘‘We are intervening downstream when we should be doing it upstream,’’ said Lidia Fersuoch, the Venice head of Italia Nostra, the cultural campaign group.
As long as the city continued to license new hotels it was foolhardy to think that tourists could be halted by a traffic light, she added.
Marco Gasparinetti, head of Gruppo 25 Aprile, a residents’ committee, agreed. ‘‘The proposal is inapplicable. Who will control who gets through?’’ Halting access to the square would simply spread the congestion to areas that had hitherto been spared, he said.
Monsignor Antonio Senno, the church official responsible for St Mark’s Basilica, welcomed the plan but warned: ‘‘Beauty must be accessible to everyone, including those who have less money and come only for the day.’’