Cruise ship bans and crack-downs around the world: More cities introducing restrictions

Juneau in Alaska is one of the latest in a long line of ports to conclude you can have too much of a good thing. The town of 32,000 people decided that the 1.65 million cruise passengers it receives annually is too many.

Last year, it announced it would restrict cruise passenger numbers to 12,000 on Saturdays and 16,000 on other days. Does that still seem like a lot? Some residents think so, and are pushing for ship-free Saturdays or other restrictions.

In France, Nice’s mayor Christian Estrosi last week signed a decree that will ban ships carrying more than 900 passengers from docking in the ports of Nice and neighbouring Villefranche-sur-Mer from July 1.

“Cruises that pollute, that dump their low-cost clientele who consume nothing but leave their waste behind, have no place here,” Estrosi said.

Agitation concerning cruise ships has been with us for a while, but has grown since the pandemic, which gave port residents the chance to see what their cities were like without cruise ships. Many liked what they saw.

The chief complaints are about overcrowding, noise, traffic congestion around ports, environmental damage, and pollution both from cruise ships themselves and – especially in homeports – the trucks that deliver services to them.

In New York, legislation against diesel-powered cruise ships is under consideration following complaints from locals about the pollution from the 200 cruise ships that dock in the harbour annually. If passed, ships would be compelled to connect to the city’s power grid while docked, although not all have that ability.

Other ports have demanded that cruise ships leave all together. In Venice, worries about damage to the lagoon and fragile building foundations resulted in large cruise ships being banned from the Giudecca Canal in 2021, although not, as is often assumed, from Venice itself.