New exit route
The new western exit, with a total budget of slightly over 35 million euros (12 billion drachmas), will link up with the undersea route and allow vehicles going to East Thessaloniki to avoid the center of the city altogether. The section going through urban areas will be finished within this year while that outside the city will be finished by 2003, according to the general director of the Central Macedonia Region, D. Sariyiannis. Carted away The reasons for the delays, which have added over five years to the project, are its complexity, shoddy construction work and expropriations, which cost 20.5-23.5 million euros (7-8 billion drachmas). For the work to be built, a whole OSE building was carted 40 meters away on rails, a factory and school were moved, and works were also carried out to link it to the new long-distance bus station. Floodwater drains were also laid. Interchanges The Eastern Peripheral Highway, which started operating in 1992, is already saturated. It has the most cars and the highest number of accidents in the area. Traffic will be speeded up by the construction of interchanges, and work was started recently at five locations. The exits at Eptapyrgio alone (one of the five that will be built) have improved traffic considerably. Completion date The work is budgeted at 675 million euros (23 billion drachmas). The public works minister, Vasso Papandreou, mentioned 2003 as the completion date, but the Western Macedonian branch of the Technical Chamber of Greece (TEE) believes 2004 or 2005 is more likely. The Central Macedonia Region wants the works finished before 2004, since soccer preliminaries for the Olympic Games will be held in Thessaloniki. In 2004, Thessaloniki will also acquire a second, outer bypass, 15 kilometers in length. Already under construction, with a budget of 94 million euros (32 billion drachmas), it is part of the Egnatia Highway and will be joined to the current bypass.
