Welcome to Amsterdam - Now Please Go Away

I use this sign in current presentations of how not to market visitors to a city. It's outside the North-South Line exhibition, built at Amsterdam Central Station to explain why the capital of the Netherlands has been dug up and disrupted since 2003.

But clearly the exhibition staff have been bothered by pesky tourists wandering into the exhibition area to ask for directions or other tourist information. It is, after all, marked as a visitor's centre and it's run by Amsterdam City Council. Clearly, the solution they decided on was to put up a sign outside telling people to clear off and find the VVV (Tourist Office) a few hundred metres away.

I would have put up a big sign outside saying

YES. Information about our great city can be found across the road inside the VVV Building (picture below and map). If you're interested in how our city will be changed by the new metro, then please come inside.

Most people I talk to think this office just sells tickets for the tram and metro. If the sign said "City Info and Tickets", everything would be a lot clearer.

So what was the problem?

 

I'm afraid I left the exhibition in Amsterdam Central station completely baffled.

Suppose I suggested to you that your city needed another 9 km of underground. And that the project would start in 2003 and be ready 14 years later, 16 if you really are concerned about the final details. And that the bill would be 3.1 billion Euro, so that you could shave off a massive 15 minutes for a journey to the centre of Amsterdam from Central Station on the North Side. You'd say it was a bonkers scheme would'nt you? Well, that's what they're doing in the centre of Amsterdam. During IBC I have wondered what the hell is taking so long and why the roads are such a dangerous mess around the exhibition cente. There's an exhibition centre on the side of Amsterdam central station with brochures in English and Dutch explaining how they are really working on the 10th Great Wonder of the World. Except the brochures don't say what its costing, when it will be finished and what was the problem they were really trying to solve. The wikipedia entry is actually a more balanced view of what looks like a classic case of engineers on steroids. Imagine the disruption to businesses near this gaping hole.

For half that money they could afford to hire movie stars to give away free coffee on golden trams which would be so enjoyable you'd wish the journey took longer. Or am I missing something here?