Under highway near Kifissou interchange, a dusty dirt track
The Kifissou interchange has been completed and the national road has been linked to the coastal road via the Kifissou freeway, but the nightmare continues for residents of Neo Faliro and Moschato. Apart from high levels of air pollution and airborne particles, they have to put up with dust, mud, potholes and heaps of rubble in their streets. Kifissou Street, the road that runs beneath the freeway on either side of the river, has been transformed – especially on the Moschato side – into a third-rate dirt road, patched over with asphalt or, to be more precise, retaining a few patches of asphalt left from the road that was there before the major works were done. «When it rains, you need galoshes, agile feet and the skill of an acrobat just to cross the road. On sunny days, you’re glad there’s no mud but then passing vehicles raise huge clouds of dust. We don’t dare open our windows anymore,» says Ioannis Palaoukakos, who lives on Kifissou. «I’ve been living here for 30 years, and the place never looked like this. The project is finished but nobody has given a thought to the people who live under the bridge.» The Municipality of Moschato says that a study made on behalf of the Public Works Ministry to make Kifissou into a road for light traffic is due to be completed in about a month. The dirt road will be laid with cobblestones and sound barriers will be erected to muffle the noise from the bridge. But permanent residents do not conceal their disappointment. «They’re just sugaring the pill,» said one. «We feel like an unimportant detail compared with the ‘great’ project. Come and spend a day here in the dust and dirt. Nobody else knows what we’ve been through these past months.»
