Europe’s largest construction firm, Vinci, which is leading the project consortium named Noriant, could sue the Flemish state if the project is taken away from them.
On the night of the referendum, as the results came in, BAM chairman Jan van Rensbergen pointed out that the turnout was low at 35 percent and maintained that the bridge variant had to go ahead.
“The congestion at the moment is costing Antwerp’s economy 75 million euros a year,” he said in an interview.
Noriant project director Lode Franken said its objective remained to complete the project.
“You need to keep in mind that about 10,000 jobs are, directly or indirectly, linked to this project,” he said.
Retired advertising executive Wim van Hees sat at his kitchen table and angrily skimmed through the latest leaflet sent to households in Antwerp.
“It is a dictat coming from outside Antwerp,” said van Hees, one of the figureheads of the campaign against the bridge.
He pointed to a digitized image of the docks on the cover that he said creates a false impression of the bridge’s route.
“It has nothing to do with the wellbeing of our city and its implementation was a totally undemocratic decision,” he said.
Van Hees is the former boss of Antwerp’s socialist mayor, Patrick Janssens, who worked at his advertising agency and has recently reversed a former position as a supporter of the project.
Janssens said he changed his mind when a study by consultancy Arup in March found alternatives to the bridge.
“I initially defended the project, even [though] I was not in favor of it, because I thought it was going to happen anyway,” Janssens said.
Planning officials outside the battle say the fight offers procurement lessons for public authorities across Europe.
The Lange Wapper’s main advocate, BAM — which was set up in 2003 to implement a master plan for mobility as the technocratic answer to unstable coalition politics — failed to engage with local residents and eventually became seen as too close to the construction consortium, Noriant.
“If you want to avoid problems, you need to engage stakeholders from day one,” said Kurt van Dender, chief economist at the International Transport Forum.
As opposition to the project rose over the years, so did project cost estimates, skyrocketing to 2.5 billion euros from 500 million euros.
With traffic on Antwerp’s ring road already swelling to 250,000 vehicles per day, however, alternatives to the bridge could take at least three more years to procure, setting back a project vital for the city’s economy.
“If they choose a tunnel rather than a bridge, it would be a burden for me as it would pass right where my building is, but I would bear that burden because the national flows of transport should not pass via the inner city,” Leysen said.
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