Thessaloniki Ring Road to be upgraded with a 300m-euro PPP project

A PPP project is being examined regarding the upgrading of the “congested” eastern section of Thessaloniki  Ring Road, by the Ministry of Infrastructure. This is one of the projects announced by the Greek PM, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, at the 84th Thessaloniki International Fair, a few days ago.

According to sources of ypodomes.com, the PPP option may succeed as it has already been applied in 2 other motorway tenders (i.e. Crete’s VOAK and Kalamata-Methoni road axes). The big benefit of this solution, if selected, will be the absence of tolls (although it has not been definitely decided).

This gives a great advantage to this method, if it is taken under consideration that the cost will reach 300m euros. If it proceeded as a public project it could be quite difficult as it would require a large amount of money from NSRF, a process that, based on former experience, is very time consuming.

A concession solution would lead to toll station and would turn the Ring Road into another Attiki Motorway of Thessaloniki, which neither the Ministry nor the local authorities probably want.

The main idea of the project is the creation of a fly-over with 2 lanes of traffic per direction. It will start from Papageorgiou Hospital and reach Konstantinopolitika area, with a length of about 4 km.