Rail services in Greece will “gradually” resume from March 22, three weeks after the serious train crash on February 28 that killed 57 people, Transport Minister Georges Gerapetritis said on Tuesday.
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Rail services, which had been disrupted after two trains collided head-on at Tempé, 350 km from Athens, “will gradually resume from March 22,” Georges Gerapetritis said in a railway press release.
He specified that traffic will initially be with “the intercity (passenger) train connecting the port of Piraeus near Athens to the international airport Eleftherios Venizelos” of the Greek capital, the freight train connecting Thriasio in the department of Attica, Thessaloniki (north) and regional trains in the north of the country will be resumed.
On March 27, local trains connecting towns in the Peloponnese (south-west) will resume, while passenger trains between Athens and Thessaloniki will only start on April 1.
In the middle of this line, near the city of Larissa (centre), on February 28, the collision between a passenger train and a freight train occurred, the worst accident that Greece has experienced in recent years.
This accident was mainly attributed to a “mistake” by the station manager Larissa, 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 sparked a movement of anger in the country against the conservative government that had failed to modernize the safety of Greek railways.