Today is a long-awaited day for the second largest Greek city – the opening of the subway in Thessaloniki.
More precisely, as Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said in August, the Thessaloniki metro will not be opened, but handed over to the citizens, because there have already been too many “discoveries” since 2012 here, after which the underground railway never started working, BTA specifies.
As the information portal in.gr writes, the metro handover ceremony will take place at 12:00 p.m. today at the depot in the suburb of Pylea in the presence of Mitsotakis. Immediately after that, the first line will start serving the citizens and visitors of the city. It will connect the railway station west of the center of Thessaloniki with the Nea Elvetia district in the east of the city.
Due to the bad weather that gripped Greece, however, the planned outdoor celebration in Thessaloniki was postponed until December 4, voria.gr website reported.
The celebration is organized by the European Union, which co-financed the construction of the Thessaloniki metro with 1 billion. euro, and “Traps project”. For next Wednesday, they are planning a big outdoor event with visual effects, performances, a dance workshop, music, games and other entertainment.
The section of the first line that will be opened today is 9.6 kilometers long and has 13 stations. 18 state-of-the-art state-of-the-art trains will run along the route. They are air-conditioned and will be operated automatically, but there will still be an operator in the cabin.
Automatic safety doors are installed on the platforms.
During rush hour, trains will run at intervals of 3.5 minutes, with the possibility of this being shortened to 90 seconds after the extension of the line to the Kalamaria district. "Proto theme" adds that the subway will operate from Sunday to Thursday from 5:30 a.m. in the morning until 0:30 a.m. at night, and on Fridays and Saturdays - from 5:30 a.m. to 2:30 a.m. at night.
There is a ticket desk at each station, as well as a total of 104 ticket machines that accept both cash and bank cards.
From November 30, the day of its launch, until December 3, travel in the Thessaloniki metro will be free. After that, for six months, the ticket price will be reduced - 60 euro cents instead of the regular price of 90 euro cents for public transport in the city.
The Thessaloniki metro is also distinguished by the opportunity for its visitors to see archaeological finds discovered during construction. Yesterday, the President of Greece, Katerina Sakellaropoulou, and the Prime Minister, Mitsotakis, visited the archaeological site discovered at the central station "Venizelou".
As it is written on the website of the company “Elliniko Metro”, which is the operator of the two subways in Greece – in Athens and in Thessaloniki, the decision to build the Thessaloniki Metro was made in 2003, and construction itself began in 2006. However, the truth, as recalled by “Proto Topic”, is that the idea of the metro has been around since 1918, it was first included in the budget in 1976, and an attempt at construction was made in 1987, when however only one short tunnel section was built, after which the site was abandoned due to lack of funding.
Construction and after 2006 was accompanied by many problems, lawsuits, changes of the contractor. In 2018 then Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras opened the first metro station – which, in addition to leading nowhere, was not ready, and in the background were panels with printed images of ticket machines. This was also the reason why the current Prime Minister Mitsotakis avoided the word “discovery”. Delays and problems made the project more expensive, with its value rising from 1.15 billion to 1.5 billion. euro. Smaller scandals accompanied the project until the end - two contests for choosing a logo failed, and at the last moment the government commissioned the creation of a project with a direct award and without a competition, which caused negative comments in the media and from some designers.
The delays also gave rise to many jokes about the Thessaloniki metro. One of them defined it as “the shortest joke”, and another said: “The metro in Athens is nice, but the metro in Thessaloniki is just unreal”. In a recent publication “Vima“ even calls it “collective trauma“ for the Thessalonians he quotes as commenting: “My hair turned white (during construction)“ and “I am lucky to have lived, others did not“.
Today, however, as the journalist Thanasis Tassioulas says, the moment of “joke became reality“ or the “dream that came true”. Like Athens and Thessaloniki, it will have modern public transport and will strengthen its position as a “second capital” of Greece.
In front of the radio station Sky 100.3, the Minister of Infrastructure and Transport, Christos Staikouras, said that according to forecasts, the metro in Thessaloniki will transport 254 thousand people a day, and there will be 57 thousand fewer cars on the streets of the city.
The section that will be opened today is only the first stage of the development of the Thessaloniki metro. Construction is already underway on its first extension – in an easterly direction towards the Kalamaria district. As the information portal www.newmoney.gr writes, the extension to Kalamaria with five new stations is expected to be ready by the end of 2025.
According to a publication on the site b2green.gr, the development plans of the Thessaloniki metro envisage its expansion in the northwest direction. The goal is by 2040. half of the trips in the city should be made by public transport – from just 15 percent currently. It is planned that in this period the metro lines will have a length of 48.22 km and 44 stations. So far, however, it has not yet been specified where the funding will come from, and according to the website, support will also be sought from the European Union.
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