Road projects enter the last lap
The major road projects will all be ready just a few months before the Olympic Games. Kifissos Avenue, the new intersection at Faliron, Marathonos and Varis-Koropiou avenues, Attiki Odos (in its entirety) and secondary arterial routes are nearing completion – though they will not be open before next April or May. The requisite test period means that roads will almost immediately be put into service for the Games, so that residents will not get to use them until autumn 2004. One of the most important projects is Kifissou Avenue, the western section of the Olympic Ring, which is expected to solve congestion from the Athens-Lamia national road to Piraeus. It terminates at the Peace and Friendship Stadium in a complex multilevel intersection that will convey traffic to Piraeus, Palaio and Neo Faliron and Poseidonos Avenue. In April, the last, 3-kilometer-long stretch of the Attiki Odos – to the Doukissis Plakentias intersection – will be opened. Earlier, in December of this year, the Metamorphosis-Elefsina section (about 32 kilometers) will come into use, resulting in a highway that will allow movement from the airport, the Peloponnese, Central Greece and the suburbs of Athens to Olympic venues (the Olympic Stadium, Marathon Avenue, the coastal strip and the city center).
