Greece’s 10 longest road tunnels

Greece’s motorway network is now completed (except for E65 which will be released shortly) having transformed the transportation map of the country. Among the projects that have been implemented over the last decades, road tunnels stand out for their technical complexity and difficulty and the fact that have been designed and carried out by Greek companies thus adding new achievements and valuable know-how to the domestic constructions market.

Apart from the (usually justified and productive) criticism, sometimes we have to give credit to ourselves for the materialization of truly challenging projects. Road tunnels are definitely some of them and Ypodomes.com presents you the list with Greece’s top-10 tunnels (in terms of length):

1. Tempi Tunnel 2-T2 (6 km – Aegean Motorway)

2. Drisko Tunnel (4.6 km – Egnatia Motorway)

3. Panagopoula Tunnel (4 km – Olympia Motorway)

4. Metsovo Tunnel (3.5 km – Egnatia Motorway)

5. Dodoni Tunnel (3.36 km – Egnatia Motorway)

6. Klokova Tunnel (3 km – Ionian Motorway)

7. Platamonas Tunnel (3 km – Aegean Motorway)

8. Domokos Tunnel (3 km – Central E65 Motorway) To be released soon

9. Ag. Konstantinos Tunnel (2.5 km – Nea Odos Motorway)

10. Kastania Tunnel (2.22 km – Egnatia Motorway)

Interesting data

The length of all 10 tunnels combined is 31 km. If we connected them, one after the other, they would be longer than Athens Metro Line 1, which has a length of 24 km or they would be equal to the entirety Thessaloniki’s Ring Road length (31.4 km) or slightly less than half of Attiki Motorway (70 km).

Tempi Tunnel (T2) has been opened since 2011 but it, unfortunately, coincided with Greece’s financial crisis, delaying its completion considerably. In fact, it took six more years to finally operate (April 2017). Let’s not forget though that its operation abolished the obsolete and dangerous part of the old network at Tempi Valley, that has counted multiple fatalities over the years.

Driskos Tunnel in Egnatia Motorway, was topping the list for years, not only for its long length but also for its technical features, as it passes through Pindos mount range.

Panagopoula twin tunnels are 4km long to Athens and 3.16 km long to Patras, as opposed to the other nine tunnels of the motorway that have almost the same length in both directions.

The 3-km-long Klokova Tunnel claims a place in the Guinness records as it was drilled in just 13 months. This is a Greek record, unprecedented for a road tunnel project in the country and was a very important step for the completion of Ionian Motorway.

Our list, as an exception, is featuring the future Domokos Tunnel. It is located in Lamia-Xyniada section of E65 Motorway and to date, 1,000 meters have been opened (500 metres on each side during the period 2008-2011). When finished, it will constitute the most important technical project of E65 as it will eliminate the dangerous turns after the town of Lamia and, in that sense, deserves an early “reservation” at Ypodomes.com top-10 list.

Nikos Karagiannis-ypodomes.com

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