Amsterdam city council’s executive board was, with hindsight, wrong when it gave the green light to the controversial Noord-Zuid metro in 2002, alderman Hans Gerson told councillors on Wednesday evening.

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.
But Gerson refused to admit the decision was wrong at the time, as stated by a council committee which investigated the metro project last year. Based on the information available in 2002, the decision to go ahead was correct, he said.
The council board is determined to press ahead with the metro despite all the setbacks. However, the project is likely to be central in the forthcoming local election campaign ahead of the March 3 vote.