Eroded road ready next May
The section of a vital highway spanning the Peloponnese from north to south that collapsed after subsidence and landslides last month will have been fully repaired in 14 months’ time, the government promised yesterday. The Public Works Ministry had initially expressed fears that repairs could take up to three years. «The works will have been completed long before the 2004 Olympic Games,» Public Works Minister Vasso Papandreou told journalists after a visit to the destroyed stretch, near Nemea, of the national road from Corinth to Tripolis. Some 200 meters of tarmac buckled and subsided on February 9 after earth loosened by days of heavy rainstorms eroded from under the 11-year-old highway. Papandreou said a small road will have been built by May to carry traffic around the damaged section, replacing the much longer detour motorists must now make along the old national road to Argos. She said the highway repairs will take one year, and will start in two months. Today, she is to inspect damage wreaked by subsidence on another highway south of Megalopolis.
