A short history
There is so much to tell about the North/South metro line that it does not fit the character of our website, so we have to keep it short. The metro line that would connect Noord with the rest of the city already appeared in plans around the 1970s. In the end other lines were given priority, and it was only more than 20 years later that Line 52 came back into the picture. After some legal wrangling in the city council and a number of procedures, it took another 10 years before a definitive GO was given for the construction of the line, by which time it was the end of 2002. Meanwhile an information film had already been presented to the Amsterdammers, which gives us the wonderfully nostalgic footage below, complete with the yellow trams!
Subsidence, damage and far too much money spent
Earlier metro projects had already taught the city council some hard lessons, so for this construction a combination of tunnel boring and, at some points along the route, sinking caissons was chosen. It soon turned out that this technique was not 'watertight', and leaks appeared in the sheet piling, which in turn caused subsidence of several listed buildings on the Vijzelgracht. Once again the line was called into question: should we carry on, or for instance only finish the Noord to Centraal Station section? And that is before we even get to the money. In the end the line cost 3.1 billion euros, more than half of which was paid for by the city council. At one time people thought the line could be built for 1.5 billion guilders, so yes, that is slightly over budget.
And now we finally ride
Almost 20 years after the decision to build the line, we now hop on in De Pijp as a matter of course to get off at Centraal Station in record time. The aim of the North/South metro line? To provide more and better public transport without higher costs and without an increase in travel time. Mission accomplished! So concluded a recent study by the University of Amsterdam, the Vrije Universiteit, the Centrum voor Wiskunde & Informatica, TU Delft and the Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Metropolitan Solutions. What the future of the line looks like, we do not know. Perhaps the connection to Schiphol will be built, or maybe even further to Zaandam, or perhaps the as yet unused station Sixhaven in Noord will be added. In any case, Metro Line 52 has won the hearts of Amsterdammers. Metro is no longer a dirty word.
- 01There are eight stops; one station was in the end never built. The metro takes about a quarter of an hour for the whole route.
- 02The metro currently runs 8 times an hour. When the line opened it was 10 times an hour, but passenger numbers dropped sharply because of the coronavirus crisis.
- 03The total length of the line is 3.8 kilometres (including the stations).
- 04Unlike other Amsterdam lines, the North/South line follows the existing street plan almost entirely. This made the tunnelling safer.
