Racers dice with death on Venice’s canals
A trend among young Venetians for speeding around the city in motorboats at night, damaging ancient palazzi as they kick up the water, has prompted anger and predictions of fatal collisions.
The alarm was raised this week when a video was posted online of a boat with two people on board racing along a canal near Venice’s Santa Lucia train station in thick fog, stopping just short of a barrier where the waterway was under repair.
“The situation is out of control,” said Marco Borghi, a city official.
A second video shows boats moored at the side of a canal on the lagoon island of Murano bouncing on a large wake and crashing into each other as a boat zips past. The hunt is on to identify the driver.
Venice plans to install 20 speed cameras on canals within a few months to tackle offenders.
Giovanni Giusto, a councillor, said the racers “use social media to throw down a challenge to others. I hope it doesn’t lead to tragedy”.
The speed limit in the Venice lagoon is 20kph, but it drops to 7kph for private boats in the Grand Canal, to stop wakes eroding the sides of ancient buildings – a perennial problem which led to large cruise ships being banned from the city.
Venice has clamped down on tourists misusing the canals. In 2022, two were fined €1500 for zipping down the Grand Canal on electric surfboards.
However, the new wave of speedsters was comprised of bored locals, said Andrea Picche, the head of Venezia Taxi.
“It’s just like kids who live on land racing their mopeds, and just as they can adjust their engines to go faster, Venetian youth know how to get their outboards up to 60 horsepower from 40.”
A favourite place to race is in the lagoon, around the islands of Vignole and Sant'Erasmo, where boats are taken up to 70kph, according to Marco Agostini, a local police chief.
“The problem is you can take a 40hp boat out in Venice when you are 15 with no licence. That’s a big mistake, because these teenagers feel invincible,” he said.
Despite appearing to be open water, the Venice lagoon is often too shallow for boats, and is crisscrossed by navigable channels up to 5m deep, which are marked by poles. “They are out there at night with no lights, hitting the poles,” Agostini said.
The need for speed and the desire to post exploits on TikTok is a new twist for a city which has long enjoyed life on the lagoon, using smaller islands for picnics in summer, and swimming off sandbanks at the small island of Bacan.
Giovanni Giusto, a councillor who is in charge of maintaining the city’s traditions, encourages young Venetians to learn to row and to participate in the annual Regata Storica rowing race on the Grand Canal, which has been run since the 13th century and gave the world the word “regatta”.