Antwerp bridge project toppled

In an 18 October referendum, "the citizens of Antwerp voted 'no' to the controversial Lange Wapper bridge," a huge two-kilometre long viaduct designed to extend the city's ringroad over a harbour area of the city, reports De Standaard. Currently, all the traffic on the Antwerp ringroad – an estimated 250,000 vehicles per day including large numbers of heavy goods trucks from France and Germany en route to Rotterdam — is forced to take the southern section of the ringroad, which results in daily traffic jams in the Kennedy Tunnel under the Scheldt. In the wake of a campaign mounted by local environment groups which highlighted the increase in fine particle pollution that would be caused by more traffic, close to 60% of Antwerp's population voted against the project. According to the daily, the Minister-President of Flanders, Kris Peeters, who, unlike the city's mayor, supported the project, "will have to deploy all of his political talents if he is to prevent the issue from becoming a bone of contention for his government and the Flemish political arena in general." In short, "the people of Antwerp have made their position clear, but the problem of the ringroad has yet to be resolved."