Traffic at the Split City Port is most pronounced this weekend – convoys of vehicles descend to the pier to board ferries, special lines to the islands are introduced, ships arrive from the Italian side of the Adriatic, larger groups of cruise passengers take a tour of Split, everyone rushes and wants to get to their destination as soon as possible, reports Slobodna Dalmacija.
“With the synergy of all of us, we are bringing order to the port. We are well organized, but the numbers are relentless. This morning, more than 1,500 passengers and 500 vehicles arrived with two ships from Italy, from Ancona. We perform customs inspections in all four lanes, as many as we have. We have also set up a mobile device for document inspection and checking Covid passports. We process 200 vehicles in an hour, and I have to admit that no one is angry about what is waiting in the line because everyone sees how we work at full capacity,” Joso Vujić, Commander of the Maritime Police, said at the Customs Pier, revealing that 90 percent of the guests have been vaccinated, while the rest have a certificate that they have recovered from the corona. A smaller part of them performs a quick antigen text in the port which takes 15 minutes and costs 75 kuna.
“This would go faster and faster if 60 percent of them did not have old documents, so we waste time scanning,” explains police officer Stipe Šurlin.
Commander Vujić reveals that this year there is a huge number of French tourists on ships from Italy:
“Marco Polo” is now going to Stari Grad; it will pick up two hundred vehicles and over 600 passengers for Hvar, and then return to the Split-Ancona line again at 2:30 pm. We regulate it all.”
“True, we are introducing additional ferries if necessary; we are coordinating the approaches to the pier because we expect an influx of more than 75 thousand passengers and more than 17 thousand vehicles for this weekend. As a result, we came with a turnover of 77 percent compared to the record 2019,” concluded Jelena Ivulić of Jadrolinija.
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