Amsterdam admits metro mistake

Amsterdam city council’s executive board should never have asked city councillors to vote on plans to build a new metro in 2002, the council official in charge of the project said on Wednesday evening.

Hans Gerson, the man in charge of the city’s transport and traffic portfolio, told a full council meeting that the move had been a mistake.
Last week, Gerson was criticised when he said the council executive was wrong ‘with hindsight’ when it gave the green light to the project but refused to admit the decision was wrong at the time.
Calls from the Socialist Party for the council executive to resign were not supported by any other parties.
The project to connect the city north of the IJ waterway with the south has turned out to be twice as expensive as the original budget and will not be completed until 2017, six years later than planned.