More than 350 km of quays in Amsterdam in private hands: “You have to pay for the costs of repair yourself”
At present, a total of 354 km of quay walls in Amsterdam are in private hands. the municipality goes inform them if things go wrong, but for the cost of refurbishing they will have to run themselves. That is what Alderman for Traffic and Transport, Egbert de Vries, says in a letter to the city council. It is not clear from the municipality that these private individuals also cannot be obliged to restore their quays.
It will be a setback for the private owners of the quays in the city. The costs of conducting and diving and lab research will be approximately 5,000 euros. The municipality does say that these investigations occur ‘very incidentally’. “We educate owners about their responsibility in this matter and encourage them to pass on information to messages and provide research and maintenance intent,” writes De V in brief.
The reason for the municipality’s investigation is the collapse of the quay wall of the Grimburgwal in September 2020. The quay belongs to the UvA. According to the municipality, since the quay’s collapse, ‘more social and administrative attention’ has been paid to bridges and quay walls in the city.
Force
The Permits, Supervision and Enforcement Department (VTH) of the municipality is releasing legal resources to recover. “At the moment it is not clear that owners can be contacted to (forced) repair their quay wall, if a quay wall is not actually about to collapse. Owners can be held accountable for their responsibility,” says De Vries. “The essence is that we want to make it possible for recovery to be enforced if the public interest demands it.”
Campaign
As part of its approach to secure bridges and quay walls, the municipality has launched a campaign to start hamburgers to report concerns about a specific construction to the municipality. But the municipality also wants to encourage tram drivers and skippers who pass the quays daily to actively report their concerns.
Last week Alderman for Traffic and Transport, Egbert de Vries (PvdA) was a guest in AT5 program Park Politics. Watch the whole conversation with Alderman De Vries here.