Athens, Mar. 22, (dpa/GNA) – Greek railway services resumed on Wednesday, more than three weeks after a serious train accident in which 57 people died.
Initially, only goods trains and several regional trains had been running in the greater Athens area, the port city of Patras and Thessaloniki since the crash on March 1, according to the Ministry of Transport.
The suburban railway that connects Athens with the capital’s airport was now also running again, state television showed.
Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis apologized once again for the accident in an interview late on Tuesday with the Alpha television channel, and promised to modernize Greece’s ailing railways.
He said he would do everything to ensure that the causes of the accident are not covered up.
The government is taking a very cautious approach to restarting the railways. Trains are running slowly because modern safety and control systems have hardly worked so far, or in some cases not worked at all.
The first intercity train on the line between Athens and Thessaloniki – which the accident happened on – is not scheduled to run until April 1.
Greek railway workers went on permanent strike after the head-on collision between a freight train and a passenger train on March 1 – the worst rail accident in the country’s history.
Along with thousands of demonstrators who have protested almost daily since then, they are demanding a full investigation into the causes of the accident.
A stationmaster in the town of Larissa had sent the passenger train onto the wrong tracks. However, the human error would not have had any consequences if the electronic safeguards had worked.
The ongoing investigation is revealing details of the catastrophic state of the Greek railways on an almost daily basis.
GNA