Greek highways tend to lead double lives. Some are built, slowly and painfully, over the course of decades. Others exist mainly as announcements, pulled out of ministry drawers when the political calendar demands it. This month offers a clean illustration of both.
Funding troubles, projects that missed their moment during the financial crisis and bureaucratic inertia have shaped the maturation of the country’s critical road corridors. The result is a landscape where strategically vital highways either arrive years late or circulate as proposals awaiting their turn in the spotlight.
The one that made it
On July 24, the final 46 kilometers of the E65 open to traffic, completing the motorway’s full 182.1 kilometer length. The official inauguration of the unified highway, covering the Kalambaka to Egnatia Odos section, takes place a day earlier.
The E65 very nearly did not survive. Construction group TERNA kept the project going through the depths of the financial crisis, maintaining active worksites on its southern section even during the period of capital controls imposed on Greek banks in 2015. Now operated by Kentriki Odos, the completed motorway runs from an interchange on the Athens to Thessaloniki highway near Thermopylae to a junction on the Egnatia Odos, the east west artery spanning northern Greece, 15 kilometers west of Grevena. Total budget: close to 1.4 billion euros.
Once fully open, the E65 cuts the drive from Athens to the Egnatia Odos to four hours.
The ones that live in drawers
Then there is the other category. Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis recently remembered the Elefsina to Oinofyta motorway, announcing during a contract signing for a triple road junction at Skaramangas that the project would be fast-tracked. The proposal has been sitting at the Infrastructure and Transport Ministry since 2023, when GEK TERNA submitted it under the Model Proposals framework, the mechanism through which Greek construction groups pitch privately initiated public works.
Leaks around the announcement suggest a tender will be unveiled at the Thessaloniki International Fair, the September event where Greek prime ministers traditionally set out their agenda. Market sources are unconvinced, suspecting the announcement has more to do with the political calendar than with any imminent construction.
If the project indeed becomes reality it would help solve a major issue. The 40 to 45 kilometer closed motorway would run from Elefsina, linking to the Attiki Odos toll ring road and the arteries of western Attica, down to Oinofyta and a direct connection with the Athens to Lamia national highway. At a cost of 1 billion euros, it would bypass the Kifissos, the chronically jammed motorway that serves as Athens’ main north south spine, and give the logistics operators of western Attica a proper corridor. Journeys along the route would shrink to roughly 30 minutes.
The Attiki Odos extensions sit in the same limbo. GEK TERNA, AVAX and AKTOR have submitted proposals to extend the western Ymittos ring road to Rafina, push the Attiki Odos to the Kalyvia junction for a better link with Lavrio, and build the Ilioupoli urban tunnel connecting Kareas with Vouliagmenis Avenue.
That last project is the most urgent of the three. The transformation of the former Hellinikon airport site into an entirely new urban district is expected to pile traffic onto Athens’ southern suburbs, and the tunnel is meant to be the pressure valve. Deputy Infrastructure and Transport Minister Nikos Tachiaos has said it remains on the table and would be among the first projects evaluated under the recently streamlined Model Proposals regime. For now there is nothing new to report, even as Hellinikon begins filling with residents over the next two years.
One shovel in the ground
Between the finished and the promised sits a modest middle category: work that has actually started, if late. Crews began last week, a year behind schedule, on decongesting the Nea Attiki Odos at the Metamorfosi junction, at the exit toward the Athens to Lamia highway.
The fix gives the two entry branches, one arriving from the airport direction and one from Elefsina, independent access onto the motorway toward Lamia, ending the merge that currently chokes both approaches. Capacity at the junction is expected to more than double, cutting peak hour delays by at least half.
Source: tovima.com
