Cologne, Germany and its cathedral are prime tourist territory, and also a bustling modern city with a crowded downtown core that jams up traffic on its seven bridges across the Rhine river.
The city also has budget issues, so a new bridge is not an option, even if it were built away from the downtown core. So, the city is considering a whole new transport network, using ‘water buses’ that would operate like Venice’s network of vaporettos, carrying passengers up and down the river, as well as across it.
Similar networks exist also in Hamburg (picture above) as well as London and Rotterdam. It would be much faster and less expensive to implement than a new bridge, so Cologne may be on its way to becoming another “Venice of the North.”
