Sotiris Kouvelas, no longer a politician, has the right to smile. Thirty-six years after the first attempt to build a subway in Thessaloniki, it’s time to hear the first horn. Kouvelas was mayor in 1986 when he put forward the idea of ​​building a subway in the city, even starting work under Egnatia Odos, at the height of Fontana.

He was then fought hard, he was mocked, the plan was not carried out – maybe he did not exist, as his political opponents, chatting about fireworks, claimed – and the mayor’s initiative to equip the city of the metro went down in history as the “Kuvel hole”. From one point of view, and regardless of the fate of his enterprise at the time, Mr. Kouvelas now has the right to say that he gave the kick-off.

However, he carefully avoids claiming such “superiority”. “I am happy about this, as well as everyone who is aware of the benefits for our city. Better late than never…” he says in response to K’s question whether he feels justified now that this much-discussed project in Thessaloniki is coming to an end.

According to Attico Metro’s schedule, the project will be commissioned on December 31, 2023, and as its president, Mr. Nikos Tahiaos, told K, “this practically means that it will be put into operation in the first days of 2024.” .

The city, however, is already moving towards the metro, with its work expected to improve the daily lives of citizens.

In Egnatia Odos and Delphi, the two main highways of the route, the “bells” of trade and hotels are ringing joyfully with the removal of construction sites, from which all economic activity has been extinguished for ten years.

The sheet metal remains on Venizelou Street to remind for some time of the division of the local society that brought back the most important project of Thessaloniki a few years ago.

“We were resuscitated. We suffered for fifteen years. Almost all economic activity was suppressed by the presence of a construction site. The occupancy of my hotel dropped to 8% -9%. There are many hotels in Egnatia Odos that have been dealt a crushing blow. We hope the metro will give us back what it has deprived us of,” says the owner of the Holyday Inn hotel on Monastiriou street, Mr. Telis Thomopoulos.

“The city’s trade landscape is changing,” explains the president of the trade association, Mr. Pantelis Philippidis. “Egnatia and its vertical streets have been dead for more than a decade. Entire blocks were in Delphi and in the city center, next to construction sites, where all the shops were closed. With the metro we hope for Sunday. We estimate that more than 2,000 stores have been closed.”

Thirty-six years after the Kuvel Hole, the city is gearing up for a project that has divided and cost the economy to build.

The arrival of the subway has dramatically increased the interest of the real estate market, which is investing in buildings along its route, where stores are moving and new ones are planned to open.

Old, small and larger derelict hotels from the interwar period are being bought by foreign investment schemes, mostly Israeli, to become boutique hotels, much of the economic activity is preparing to move from Tzimiska to Egnatia, which rightly seeks to modernize after decades of “crowding out”.

Perpetual motion has been recorded at all levels, waiting for the departure of the first train that will run from Kalamaria to the railway station, with a branch (soon) to Kalamaria in the first stage and in the second its extension to the airport and the western districts of the urban complex.

But behind the optimism and joy that “finally the metro has appeared in Thessaloniki,” the question arises whether the commissioning of the long-awaited rail track from the beginning of next year will be a panacea for solving the acute transport problem, which acts as a brake on its development and transformation into a modern European model city for its “neighbourhood”, the Balkans.

“The metro will not magically solve the problem,” transport engineer and environmentalist Sakis Tsiotras told K.

“Of course, this will help reduce the traffic load, but it is intended to serve traffic along and parallel to the coastline. Vertical approaches to the center will have a theme. The metro will not cover the needs of the northern, say, mountainous regions. According to 2018 measurements, we have 400,000 daily movements from the districts and wider area of ​​Thessaloniki prefecture to the center, but the metro will be able to transport 360,000 people. Ancillary works will need to be carried out, such as secure parking spaces at the terminals, as well as in intermediate places for motorcycles, bicycles, etc.”

According to the former vice mayor and architect Mr. Thanasis Papas, it is necessary to prepare new traffic studies, as well as new urban renewals that will bring the historic city center to a new reality that will be shaped by the metro, and of course, the restructuring of the urban transport”.

In any case, with the beginning of the new year, Thessaloniki enters a new era. Metro, for all its possible imperfections, places it in a constellation of great projects that will launch it into the future.

Completion of airport modernization, forthcoming deepening and expansion of the 6th pier of the port, redevelopment of the site of the International Exhibition, start of construction of the Overpass on the Ring Road, which, together with the metro, will help to unload traffic in the city, transform its embankment, work for the Holocaust Museum, change the landscape of real estate with new large hotel complexes – and not only – plans to build skyscrapers are infrastructure springboards that will accelerate it in the future and increase the gravitational pull that is already affecting the societies and economies of the interior of the Balkans. All of these projects remain the subject of broader urban planning, from which the city will develop and move towards the new geopolitical reality that is emerging in the wider region. Some say he’ll need a 21st century Embraer.