Gondoliers row into action to unravel Venice traffic tangle

Anyone who has ever visited Venice will know the problem: the Grand Canal is horrendously, perilously overcrowded.

Gondolas rear and plunge alarmingly in the wake of vaporetti powering from one bank of the canal to the other. Water taxis swerve round lumbering barges, laden with everything from tourist baggage to household garbage. And, every so often, streaking through the chaos comes a river ambulance or police launch.

Now, the gondoliers, the most traditional of Venice's canal-users, have had enough and have announced a demonstration next Sunday against the congestion of the waterways. 'We can't go on like this,' said Roberto Lupi, a spokesman for the gondoliers. 'Urgent measures are needed to put an immediate stop to this insane traffic.'

The boatmen say they are taking action, not just for their own safety, but for that of the thousands of foreign and Italian tourists who pay to drift through the watery city aboard a gondola.

The decision to protest was taken after a one-year-old Dutch child came close to drowning last week when he and his entire family were tipped into the Grand Canal following a collision between a gondola and a vaporetto. Seven people have died in accidents along the two and a half mile canal since 1992.

According to the head of the gondoliers' association, Franco Vianello Moro, waterborne traffic in Venice has soared 30 per cent in the past two years. On an average day some 2,000 vessels now use the Grand Canal.

The Mayor of Venice, Paolo Costa, acknowledged that 'something needs to be done'. But it will not be easy to find a solution, because so many vested interests are in play. Venice's licensed gondolas - there are more than 400 - account for only 6 per cent of its canal traffic. In addition, there are about 150 vaporetti and more than 300 water taxis. On top of that come public service vessels and an unknown number of privately owned boats, most of them used to transport goods.

Costa said a solution would depend on everyone concerned making compromises. But, so far, there was no sign of that happening. 'All that anyone thinks of is defending his or her own position and attacking that of the others,' he complained.

The city council itself, though, is coming under critical scrutiny for allowing the crisis to reach this stage. It has not so far clamped down on unlicensed 'pirate' water taxis which account for about one of ten of those who ply their trade on the lagoon.

The city authorities recently built a string of cabins at canal junctions from which police officers could identify and penalise offenders. They have been equipped with air conditioning so that the officers do not suffer in the oppressive heat of a Venice summer.

But when a reporter from the newspaper La Repubblica last week travelled the length of the Grand Canal he found every single cabin empty.

Meanwhile the gondoliers are aiming to create maximum effect by staging their demonstration on the day of the annual Regatta Storica, a nationally televised event in which the gondoliers race lighter, faster gondolini . Already a huge banner has gone up in Saint Mark's Square bearing the words "Stop the Wave-making Engines!".

The war of the Grand Canal has begun.