2015 | Dec
Public transport services in the capital started in 1835. This involved 500 carriages (the so-called “pamforia” or “polyforia”) connecting Athens to Piraeus. They followed the route along Pireos Str. – along the trail of the ancient Long Walls (the users of Pireos Str. had to pay toll). In 1869 the original carriages were replaced by the, initially steam-powered, rail of Athens – Piraeus (RAP).
In 1882, Athens welcomed its first public transport network in the form of a tram system. Nine rail routes for a horse-drawn tram system had been laid by 1901, thirty years after Paris (1852) and fifty years after New York (1832).
The first bus network service started in 1913, composed by a few steam-powered and gasoline-powered vehicles. In 1925 they became 700.
Buses and trams coexisted until the 50s, but it was an unhappy coexistence. It was then that tram rails were dug out , trolleybuses replaced trams and along with buses they monopolised public transport in Athens until the underground railway started its operation in 2000 (lines 2 and 3 with a total length of 37 km). Before 2000 there was still Line 1 of course (“the electric underground rail”), connecting Piraeus to Kifissia with a 25.7 km route. It was the successor of the Athens – Piraeus rail (RAP), which was electrified in 1904 and was extended to Kifissia in 1957, along the route of the old “Beast”. The “Beast” started from Omonia square (Lavrio Sq) and terminated in Kifissia, while its second branch, starting from Heraklion was heading to Lavrio. The line to Lavrio, started from Aghioi Anargyroi and connected to the Athens – Thessaloniki mainline train line. It operated from 1889 until 1962, when operation stopped because the line was cut-off from the new highway.
In 2004 the suburban rail was inaugurated, making use of the Attiki Odos highway expropriation area. This was an absurd solution, since in most cities suburban trains penetrate the urban fabric and pass through its most central points. Instead, the motorway’s route was followed since that was where there was space available, – – however that route is away from the city fabric for environmental and urban composition purposes. Thus the suburban railway connected Messogia with Thriassio, running through the Athens basin. Its route lies away from the major business centres and thus it didn’t manage to attract a considerable number of passengers. Facilitating the access to the stations from nearby settlements involves road works and parking projects that have not been built.
Public transport was the foundation for the development of Athens, when car ownership was limited. But from the 70s onward, when the car market sky-rocketed, the role of public transport began to fade rapidly only to partly recover later, mainly thanks to the new track-based modes (Table 1).
Table 1: Annual use of public transport per person in Athens
The fact that cars received such a warm welcome both in Greece and around the world demonstrates how important it was for the 20th century human to move around with autonomy and independence. Public transport subjects people to slow travel times, specific routes and requires them to share the limited space of vehicles with strangers. Bearing this in mind, public transport could not be an end in the design itself. But nobody can deny that it is a solution. The city needs easy, cheap and pleasant access to all of its activities, wherever these might be. It also needs a transport system that does not adversely affect the environment.
The ageing vehicle fleet and its poor maintenance is a main cause of air and noise pollution in Athens. Moreover, the conditions under which vehicles operate amplify the problem. Traffic jams as a result of narrow streets and unregulated parking, as well as frequent crossroads due to small city blocks (their size is often half of that in a European city) cause a disproportionately high production of pollutants in relation to the mileage travelled. The current economic crisis, which causes a severe shortage of staff and spare parts has resulted in many route cut-backs.
Lack of road space is a major issue and a source of delays and environmental problems. Public transport and collective travelling in general are a very effective solution to this problem. An indication of space savings resulting from the use of e.g. a bus, is that depending on the number of passengers in each vehicle, a bus passenger might potentially occupy only 5% of the road surface that a car passenger does.
The collective hiring of taxis also contributes positively, but an even greater gain could be achieved if private cars in Athens travelled with an occupancy higher than the current average of 1.2 passengers/vehicle. Car pooling, the collective use of cars mainly for commuter routes and a rapidly growing trend in Europe and America, is not widely used in Greece. The main reason is the weak tradition of civic organisation and the weak culture of collective action. Car pooling is not possible for moving around the city centre, but it would be a solution for regional travelling or radial routes between the suburbs and the city centre.
Walking, cycling and public transport are the foundation for space savings. Athens, due to its high density and lacking road network, is in fact not suitable for cars. People and authorities however, insist on promoting them and do not want to admit what the real identity of the city is. If, on the contrary, its residents agreed to turn it into a city of public transport, walking and cycling, it would be able to function in a much more effective way, with important benefits for the environment and health.
Public transport is also a bet for democracy. In Europe, about 100,000,000 people are over the age of 65, 80,000,000 have disabilities and half of them are severely disabled. They are not able to drive, therefore they are in need of the public transport. However, Athens is indifferent if not hostile towards the elderly and disabled. It is not only the elderly, that at least 50% do not have access to a private car, but many other people too who either do not want to drive or cannot financially afford to drive. They account for 40% of the population. When these people, mostly tied to public transport by necessity and not by choice, want to access bus stops and metro stations, they are faced with unsuitable pavements, full of traps. Faced with these conditions many do not quit but insist on living in Athens no matter how inhospitable it may be. They manage to live there thanks to public transport too.
The most critical issue to make Athens shift to public transport, walking and cycling, is to make these modes of transport more desirable from the car in terms of cost, comfort and speed, even for car owners. Indeed, Athens is quite spread out, thus low car traffic speed would not be enough of a disincentive. High traffic speeds are a necessity for it, however, this should be a possible only for public transport, in order to make it attractive. This requires bus lanes. Athens already has 50 km of such exclusive lanes, which were created by taking away one lane from cars. Therefore, they enhance public transport while they discourage the use of cars.
The “ring of Athens” controlled by an even/odd licence plate number system established in 1982, was also a restrictive measure intended to make public transport more competitive at the expense of cars. Eventually, it was side-stepped by people who could buy a second car and by issuing thousands of licenses for exceptional movement inside the ring.
Competition between public transport and cars has taken various forms. It emerges for example when people have to choose between underground and tram. While the underground has a very high cost and long construction times, the Athenian mentality, focused entirely on cars, prefers it because it does not affect road traffic as it moves underground. On the other hand, the tram steals car space and even though it is cheap and its construction times are short, few people want it, even if they know that this mode is linked to the sustainable prospects of Athens.
Public transport, bearing in mind its key qualities, i.e. the cost and travel time, clearly comes last when competing with cars in Athens, because in Athens you are allowed to park anywhere. This is demonstrated by the study results of Attiko Metro (1996) which showed that the average cost per trip by private car was 435 drachmas, while it was 585 drachmas with public transport. This was a great difference and of course it resulted from the fact that time for an average trip by public transport (47 minutes) was much greater than by car (27 minutes). Twenty years later, given that a lot of infrastructure for cars and public transport had been built since, Athens was divided between the city centre where the use of public transport was advantageous and the rest of the city which occupied a much bigger area, where private cars still had the lead (Table 2).
Table 2: Athens 2006 Breakdown of use of various modes
Entry citation
Vlastos, T. (2015) Public transport, in Maloutas T., Spyrellis S. (eds) Athens Social Atlas. Digital compendium of texts and visual material. URL: https://www.athenssocialatlas.gr/en/article/public-transport/ , DOI: 10.17902/20971.26
Atlas citation
Maloutas T., Spyrellis S. (eds) (2015) Athens Social Atlas. Digital compendium of texts and visual material. URL: https://www.athenssocialatlas.gr/en/ , DOI: 10.17902/20971.9
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