EU meet delays station
The delayed opening of the new Metro station at Monastiraki will finally take place during Holy Week later this month, it was announced yesterday. The latest postponement has little to do with the Attiko Metro management itself. The station will be ready this week but won’t be accessible to the public until after the European Union accession treaty and summit, which will take place nearby in the Ancient Agora on April 16 and 17 and will feature some of the tightest security measures the city has ever seen. In the meantime, the station will be cloaked in aluminium sheeting. Completion of the station, which extends the current Ethniki Amyna-to-Syntagma line and intersects with the old Piraeus-Kifissia «electrico» line, has been hampered both by geological features such as groundwater, and the threat to historic buildings and churches above ground. In 1996, Attiko Metro called in Canadian tunneling expert Evert Hook to advise on excavations.
