The Athens metro is overloaded – more and more passengers, fewer trains

Athens metro is facing increasingly frequent delays, especially lines 3. On Monday morning, traffic in the area was accompanied by serious overcrowding at Syntagma station in the city center.

The station attendant was forced to stop the escalator for safety reasons due to the large number of passengers waiting on the platform.

As reported by the company STASYwhich operates the metro, the reason was mass morning load stations during peak hours, and not a technical malfunction. Crowds on the platform and difficulty boarding cars caused delays along the entire line.

A similar situation repeated itself on Friday, October 17, in the afternoon. From 18:00 to 20:00 trains towards airport They walked at long intervals, standing idle at stations. At the same time, STASY again did not record any breakdowns of the rolling stock.

While such problems are not new to the metro network, the risk of them becoming more frequent is becoming increasingly real. According to OASAin the period 2023–2024 the number of routes on lines 2 and 3 decreased by 7%and the total mileage of trains decreased by 7.8%. At the same time, passenger traffic, on the contrary, increased – from 158.6 to 170 million people per year.

Despite the fact that these figures are still below the level of 2019, when the line to Piraeusthe upward trend in the number of passengers is obvious. However, there are no plans to increase flights yet, which creates conditions for new cases of overflow and delays, especially during peak hours or in any emergency situations.

Problems are not only observed in the morning (7:00–10:00), when Line 3 trains run every four minutes. After sunset flight frequency drops sharply: after 21:00 the intervals are 7–8 minutes, and from 22:00 until the end of the movement – up to 9 minutes, which corresponds to the weekend schedule.

Website Athens Transport comments that STASY and the Ministry of Infrastructure and Transport must step up efforts to improve the operation of the metro, including by increasing staff, restoring faulty trains and purchasing new trains, including trains for intercity flights towards the airport.

Otherwise, experts warn, delays and crush will become a constant problem. This will lead to the degradation of the transport system, which in recent years has only begun to recover after lengthy repairs and a decrease in passenger traffic during the pandemic.

A positive step was the introduction 24-hour metro service on Saturdayshowever, for weekdays, urgent strengthening of the network is required to prevent the metro from becoming a source of inconvenience for Athens residents.

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