Greece’s second largest city has finally opened the doors to its brand new metro line. (Image: Getty)
second-largest city has finally opened its inaugural six-mile line after construction began all the way back in 1986.
The transport system in Thessaloniki uses driverless trains and platform screen doors across 13 stations and officially opened on Saturday, November 30 by Prime Minister
The idea was first conceived more than a century ago and the first tunnel was dug 38 years ago.
Construction began in earnest in 2003 but unearthed a treasure trove of antiques in a vast excavation which caused substantial delays.
The project was nearly abandoned in 2013 but got back on track in 2015 after the the Central Council finally agreed to detach the antiquities and reposition them at one of the stations, Venizelos.
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Key pieces of what was found have been put on display along the underground network. (Image: Getty)
The residents of the densely populated city will be able to use it for four days completely free of charge, and then the ticket price will be 0.60 euros (£50p), officials said.
“This project offers a remarkable blend of the ancient and modern, integrating archaeological heritage with metro infrastructure,” Christos Staikouras, the transport and minister, told reporters during a media tour of the subway on Friday.
Tunnelling followed ancient commercial routes through the centre of the port city that has been continuously inhabited since ancient times.
It exposed a -era thoroughfare, , water and drainage systems, mosaics and inscriptions, and tens of thousands of artefacts spanning centuries, also through Byzantine and Ottoman rule.
The tunnels had to be bored at a greater depth than originally planned, adding cost and delays, to preserve the ancient discoveries.
Key pieces of what was found have been put on display along the underground network, including a section of the marble-paved Roman thoroughfare at the central Venizelou Station.
“The project faced substantial delays and many challenges, including over 300,000 archaeological finds, many of which are now showcased at various stations along the main line,” Staikouras said.
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Government officials said the cost of the metro so far has reached three billion euros. (Image: Getty)
The project’s completion has been met with quiet amazement from residents, who for years have been plagued by undelivered promises.
In 1999, a banner on the entrance of the city’s international trade fair proclaimed that “the metro is soon coming near you”.
When the first carriages arrived in 2019, the previous government staged an “inauguration” with the carriages sitting on cement stands. Significant delays also occurred due to financial problems faced by the project’s contractor, AEGEK, which during the economic crisis that began in 2009 was driven to collapse.
Government officials said the cost of the metro so far has reached three billion euros (£2.5 billion) for the first completed line of the subway system – the majority of a second line that is currently under construction is due to be delivered in a year.
The eastward extension will add five new stations and a westward extension is also planned, but it will take several more years for the metro to reach the city’s busy Macedonia .
The construction consortium was made up of Greece’s Aktor, Italy’s Webuild, and Hitachi Rail.
Officials said the operation of the line will mean 57,000 fewer per day in the traffic-choked city, with an expected 254,000 passengers using the system daily in the city of more than 300,000 and more than a million when including the suburbs.