Another option for Venice

I am very interested to hear what everyone thinks regarding the Venice Cruise situation and them banning all big ships and some medium size ships from passing St Marks basin, I think it is a good thing to prevent any more damage to some historical sights the world famous City.

The first long term option was the dredging of a new channel linking the existing coast hugging deep water commercial channel up to the port of Maghera on the main land with the Venice cruise terminal, the cost of this around 115 million euro which would take up to 2 years to complete.

Now a new proposal has been put forward to This would see a new, free-standing jetty being built out of prefabricated concrete units and situated to the east of St Mark’s basin – somewhere just outside the sea-defence gates near the bottom of the Lido, I think. From there passengers would transit through St Mark’s basin to the existing cruise terminal in some sort of ferry – the current suggestion refers to a ‘large catamaran’ for this transit. For cruise turnarounds (and several lines do turnarounds in Venice, e.g. MSC, Costa, NCL, and of course P&O), check in would be done at the cruise terminal and then passengers would be conveyed to the ship in the ‘ferry’.

All this sounds good until you start to think about things, such as food and services to the ship which can be delivered by road now will have to be shipped out by boat, also clients luggage will also have to be moved by catamaran to and from the ship, surely this would have to run constant all day taking passengers back and for and all the cargo surely is this not causing more pollution in the lagoon and flooding then it is now and is it not shifting the problem!

Personally I am not sure this will work and cost is the same and will take the same amount of time.

Would love to hear your thoughts on this matter.