“My longest journey is you<\/b>…” could be the musical epilogue to a daily commute in Athens<\/b>! <\/p>\n
Traffic gridlock, on a 24-hour basis, is the reason it takes an average of 54.7% longer to travel a mileage distance in the capital. The relevant index, according to data from European navigation and digital map company TomTom, has risen by 1.1% compared with 2024.<\/p>\n
The big problems are in traffic and parking<\/b>. In the morning hours, drivers <\/b>spend almost twice as much time. A 15-minute journey becomes a 40-minute journey,<\/b>while in 15 minutes only 3.8 km are covered in Attica, compared to 4.5 km in Paris, Rome 4.2 km and Barcelona 4.1 km, where car restrictions are applied in the city centre.<\/p>\n
On the particularly busy Kifissos Avenue, more than 260.000 crossings per day, with trucks at peak hours<\/b> – although they account for only 8% of traffic – affecting the flow by 20%<\/b>, while the few heavy vehicles over 3.5 tonnes (just 3% to 5%, of the total traffic) burden the traffic by 9% to 15%<\/b>.<\/p>\n
The burden on the Attiki Odos is also high, with around 280,000 daily crossings recorded, showing a 10% increase from 2023.The long-term forecast even shows that the number of crossings will reach 430,000 per day in 2050, which is about 55% more than today.<\/b> Truck traffic on the Attiki Odos is also increased by 8.1% from 2024 to 2025, which affect congestion by up to 22%.<\/p>\n
A recent study by the National Technical University of Athens’ transport engineering laboratory reveals that Athens is one of the most “congested” capitals in Europe, where the average time to travel 10km is 30 minutes.<\/p>\n
Hours of desperation at the wheel, on the Kifissos, are estimated at 6.5 million<\/b> in 2024 alone. The cost? Fatigue and nervous breakdown for drivers, but also an annual loss of about 80 to 90 million euros for the state, whichinvolves an increase in transport operating costs,<\/b> delays in the movement of goods and loss of productivity.<\/p>\n
Only for a few hours now during the day, Kifissos is relatively passable, so that one can make the Piraeus-Kalftakis Bridge route without getting stuck in a queue. An average of 2 000 vehicles per hour per lane, which means 8 000 vehicles per hour in each direction. Of these, 10% to 20% are lorries. If there is an accident or a vehicle breakdown – both very likely – Kifissos becomes impassable for a long time.<\/b><\/p>\n
All this while the situation and operation of public transport has been gradually improving in recent years, with fleet renewal, the promotion of more eco-friendly vehicles and new driver recruitment. Because, as it turns out, car travel is part of the Greek culture. Athenians, in particular, find it hard to leave their cars. <\/p>\n
After all, for many journeys in the Basin, the car is practically more convenient and more comfortable. The golden period for public transport was the 2004 Olympic Games, which renewed the bus fleet until 2008<\/b>. Then came the economic crisis and as our lives deteriorated, so did the public transport. Old rolling stock on the fixed tracks, in the metro and the railway…<\/p>\n
To manage traffic and travel in Attica, the Association of Greek Transport Engineers proposes specific, permanent solutions that are not limited to increasing the number of buses and trains, but provides for interventions of a metropolitan nature that concern the road network as a whole, parking, the operation of bus lanes and long-distance travel.<\/p>\n
Among other things, it proposes immediate measures to reduce traffic congestion until the public transport system is upgraded and the necessary regional road projects are implemented, strategic planning rather than piecemeal moves, with the establishment of a Metropolitan Transport Authority for Attica and low-emission zones and a new ring road with environmental and traffic criteria, instead of the outdated one-way system.<\/p>\n
<\/b>Greece has another… distinction related to the Calvary of asphalt: It has one of the oldest vehicle fleets in Europe. Since the COVID-19 pandemic, about 140,000 new passenger car registrations have been recorded annually, few sales for the country’s population<\/b>. About 13 per 1,000 inhabitants, when the Community average is 24 sales per 1,000 inhabitants. <\/p>\n
The main problem is that old cars are not taken out of circulation, with serious consequences of multiple environmental pollution and very often damage on the move on a road or causing an accident.On the Kifissos, of the five incidents of immobilization per day,<\/b> three or four are due to breakdowns<\/b>, while fatal accidents are caused 12 times more by old trucks.<\/b><\/p>\n
In many cases the speed of vehicles on the road network of Athens tends to catch up with the speed of a bicycle, being below 20 km per hour. On Alexandra Avenue, in fact, the speed is below 10 km per hour!<\/p>\n
How about the time to… push for brave interventions in the daily traffic chaos in the basin?<\/b><\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
“My longest journey is you…” could be the musical epilogue of a daily journey in Athens!
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