“Gradual” resumption of rail transport in Greece from March 22

Rail traffic in Greece will resume “gradually” from March 22, three weeks after the serious train accident on February 28 which killed 57 people, said Transport Minister Georges Gerapetritis on Tuesday.

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Rail traffic, which had been interrupted after the head-on collision of two trains in Tempé, 350 km from Athens, “will gradually resume from March 22,” said Georges Gerapetritis quoted in a train press release.

He specified that traffic will resume first with “the intercity (passenger) train that connects the port of Piraeus, near Athens, to the international airport” of the Greek capital, Eleftherios Venizelos, the freight train that connects Thriasio in the department of Attica to Thessaloniki (north) and regional trains in the north of the country.

On March 27, local trains connecting towns in Peloponnese (southwest) will start again, while passenger train traffic between Athens and Thessaloniki will not begin until April 1.

It was in the middle of this line near the city of Larissa (center) that the collision between a passenger train and a freight train took place on February 28, the worst accident that Greece has experienced in recent years.

This accident was mainly attributed to “an error” by the Larissa station manager, who was charged and remanded in custody.

But the accident also revealed the “chronic pathologies due to omissions or indifference” of the governments of recent years and provoked a movement of anger in the country against the conservative government which did not carry out the modernization of the security of the Greek railways.

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