Greece puts pedal to the medal to rectify 5,902 danger points on roads

The big road safety program is off with… fuel from the Recovery Fund. Interventions in the first 1,500 dangerous points of the country’s road network should be completed in the fourth quarter of 2024. In total, work will be done on 5,902 places of Reduced Road Safety across Greece. By the end of 2022, the tenders for the regions of Western Greece, Central Macedonia, Ionian Islands, Western Macedonia, Eastern Macedonia – Thrace will be on track.

The total facelift of road safety in 2,500 km of the road network from end to end of the country was tabled to the Ministry of Infrastructure and Transport. The integrated action plan, worth a total of 675 million euros, concerns 7,000 dangerous points throughout the country.

More than 15,000 km of network were put under scrutiny, in order to plan the interventions in every detail. Of these 4,200 km are national roads and 10,800 km are regional roads. The relevant studies were implemented by Egnatia Odos SA. and identified the dangerous points that need interventions. According to the Commission’s data, this is the part of the road network where 39% of traffic deaths in Greece occur.

Scheduled milestones

The part of the road safety program financed by the Recovery Fund, with an estimated budget of 323,718,554.95 euros, concerns the short-term interventions that will be carried out in eleven of the thirteen regions of the country. The approximately 1,100 Reduced Road Safety spots corresponding to Attica and Crete were included in the framework of other financial tools.

The scope of the project includes the upgrading and replacement of road equipment, such as striping, horizontal and vertical markings, road signs, road surface reflectors, linear demarcation, safety barriers, electromechanical installations, electrical lighting works.

Also, locally, it is planned to complete – reconstruct the infrastructure, such as repairing damage to the road surface, replacing the old surface asphalt layer with a new non-slip layer, filling in base material, cleaning – forming an existing triangular ditch, cleaning an area to increase visibility (e.g. removing obstacles and deforestation zones).

The relevant contracts will be awarded under the design-build system. As described in the decision to include the project in the Recovery Fund, the Ministry of Infrastructure and Transport will implement projects in the regions of Sterea, Western Greece, the Northern Aegean and the Ionian Islands. Accordingly, Egnatia Odos SA in the regions of Western, Central and Eastern Macedonia and Thrace, while the regions of Epirus, Thessaly, Peloponnese and South Aegean will implement projects within their territorial jurisdiction. Also included are management costs of 4% for Egnatia Odos SA, which is the coordinator of the project.

According to the Recovery Fund milestones, the first set of contracts should be signed by the second quarter of 2023 and a year later, in the first half of 2024, all contracts should be awarded. The goal is for the projects to be completed by the end of 2025.