Karamanlis: Full undergrounding of Patras railway line, “pharaonic”

Minister of Infrastructure and Transport, Mr. Kostas Karamanlis characterized the full train undergrounding of Patras railway line as “pharaonic”, during his speech at the Parliament’s Committee, responsible for the new administrations of OSE and ERGOSE. The Minister was quite skeptical about the maturity that has been achieved to date for the project.

As he said, “the issue of the train’s undergrounding in Patras is an issue that has been of concern to Achaia and the wider region for many years. A solution has never been found, as it is an expensive, difficult project with no funding. So personally, I will never come and tell you that a project will be launched while we don’t have any studies, we do not know how much it will cost and we do not, also, know if there is funding for it.”

Mr. Karamanlis commented that there are no studies about the cost of the 5.5-km undergrounding of Patras, and added that “we are talking about a Metro project that the new Metro administration should consider…”

The Minister also said: “So what we need to do to reach the port of Patras is to find out which project can be funded and this has to do with the available studies, that provide for partial underground, you are right. However, I think that it’s a bit pharaonic to talk about full undergrounding of the line.”