Trial runs for the trains at the new Piraeus stations of the metro will begin by the end of next week, Attiko Metro Managing Director Nikos Kouretas said on Wednesday.
Speaking at the Technical Chamber of Greece's conference "Green Deal Greece 2022" at the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center, Kouretas said that the stations on the new Line 4 will be turned over for use to the public at a date to be announced shortly.
In addition, he said, the Thessaloniki metro will be operational at the end of 2023.
"Along with the three Piraeus stations we will turn over to the public in the next two months, Lines 2 and 3 [Red and Blue] will be end up serving over a million passengers a day, which means 200,000 fewer cars in Athens daily, and a drop by 880 tons of carbon dioxide," Kouretas said. "Corresponding to this, in Thessaloniki we expect to see 310,000 passengers per day, 55,000 fewer cars, and a drop by 140 tons of carbon dioxide."
The metro will also bring an improvement in the urban landscape with planting of trees, while it will also serve major facilities such as hospitals. In addition, the barriers around Line 4 earthworks will be decorated with paintings using special pollution-absorbing colors developed by a Greek startup, Kouretas said.