Thessaloniki Metro (, ) is an underground rapid transit system in Thessaloniki, Greece's second largest city. The system consists of two lines with 18 stations. It is fully automated and driverless, the first system of its kind in Greece, and is operated by Thessaloniki Metro Automatic (THEMA), a consortium.
Estimates for the cost of the megaproject are at ( today), including () in future interest payments. The project is primarily funded with loans from the European Investment Bank (EIB) and the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), as well as funds from the Greek government. Construction by a Greco-Italian consortium is overseen by Elliniko Metro, the Greek state-owned company which oversaw the construction of the Athens Metro and Athens Tram.
Proposed during the 1910s and first seriously planned in the 1980s, construction of the main line began in 2006 and on the Kalamaria extension in 2013. After years of delays, due to archaeological discoveries and the Greek financial crisis, the Line 1 opened on 30 November 2024, with Line 2 adding a further of tunnels and 5 more stations to the system on 27 August 2026. A further extension of Line 1 is planned with ERDF funds of the 2028–2032 cycle.
Name The system is commonly known as the Thessaloniki Metro (, , ), but is sometimes also referred to by the more formal name of Thessaloniki Metropolitan Railway (, ).
History Early proposals
Ernest Hébrard and Thomas Hayton Mawson were the first to propose the creation of a metro system in Thessaloniki in 1918 as part of a commission appointed by the government of Eleftherios Venizelos to redesign the city after the Great Fire of 1917, which had devastated the city centre. They proposed an underground railway to connect the New Railway Station and Nea Elvetia, terminus for a proposed railway connecting Mikra and the Strymonic Gulf. Although Thessaloniki has grown considerably since Hébrard's original design, Line 1 is almost identical to his plan and runs from his proposed new railway station to the suburb of Nea Elvetia.
A circular metro line was proposed in 1968, extending to the airport and crossing the Thermaic Gulf in a tunnel. The projects never materialised. The Thessaloniki chapter of the Technical Chamber of Greece started considering a metro system in 1976, 3:453:57 the same year a funding code for the project was incorporated into the national budget under Konstantinos Karamanlis. In 1978, Savvas Pylarinos, governor of the Thessaloniki region, recommended that a metro be incorporated into the city plan.
The idea of a metro was revived in the late 1980s, after a more than three-fold increase in car use over the preceding decade. In 1987, the University of Thessaloniki Transport Engineering Laboratory, under Vasilios Profillidis, published a proposal for an extensive, multi-branch light metro system, envisioned to be underground only between the New Railway Station and , at a cost of ( today). The city government, under Mayor Sotiris Kouvelas, adopted a modified version of this plan a year later. The line was almost identical to the modern line, with 14 stations between the New Railway Station and . The plan had one additional station, Patrikiou, between and and had alternative names for three stations. is shown as Vardari, an alternative name for the public square served by the station; is listed as Alkazar (the name of Hamza Bey Mosque when it was converted into a cinema), and is shown as Archaeological Museum. The network would be within the city limits, excluding Kalamaria and a large portion of Thessaloniki's metropolitan area. Of the of track proposed, would be underground and above ground.
First attempted construction
In 1989, construction began on the first of tunnel along Egnatia street between the Thessaloniki International Fair grounds and Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (the present station), under the slogan Yes to the metro! Yes to quality of life! (). Construction was carried out with the cut-and-cover method instead of a tunnel boring machine and was costed at a minimum of ( today).
The line was designed to be only below the road surface, but dropped to a minimum depth of in the city centre at the insistence of the city's archaeological services. Although construction was scheduled to end in 1995, the project stalled and the unfinished (but excavated) initial cut-and-cover section became known as "the hole of Kouvelas" (). The water damage caused to the foundations of the nearby Polytechnic School by the excavation works persists to the present day, with water needing to be mechanically drained daily.
The project ultimately failed due to funding issues and a lack of interest from the central government. A delegation from the city government received technical support from metro companies in Marseille, Düsseldorf, and West Berlin, as well as assurances from the leadership of the European Economic Community in Brussels that the project would be eligible for Community funding, but the central government blocked the talks and proposed a tram network instead. Kouvelas resigned as mayor in order to become Minister for Public Works in the national government after the 1989 elections, and made Thessaloniki's newly-created municipal radio station, , responsible for the project's funding via ad revenue. He later admitted being aware it would not be an adequate source of funding, and claimed it was done to force the central government into funding the project. The project also suffered due to intense political polarisation between New Democracy (of which Kouvelas was a member) and the Panhellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK) during the 1980s, with the PASOK-led neighbouring municipalities of Kalamaria and the western suburbs also refusing to support the project, 4:255:05 leading to a metro design that ran exclusively within the limits of the Municipality of Thessaloniki (the modern Line 1).
In 1992 the government of Konstantinos Mitsotakis attempted to finance the project under a concession contract with a contractor budget of ( today). His government lost the 1993 Greek legislative election and a contractor was not appointed; Kouvelas, by then Minister of the Presidency, later claimed this was done in order to avoid impressions of clientelism in the outgoing government. A Greco-Italian consortium named Makedoniko Metro () was tentatively appointed in 1994.. Digitally republished by To Vima on 24 November 2018. A runner-up consortium, headed by Bouygues, was also appointed at that time. Completion was set for 2006, in time for the city to host Expo 2008, but its bid was ultimately unsuccessful. The consortium changed composition numerous times; the three Italian companies went bankrupt, and in the end it was composed of Greek, German, and Belgian stakeholders.
Legal troubles
Internal reports indicate that the government believed the feasibility study carried out by Makedoniko Metro was unrealistic both in terms of buildability and financing, and so in 1996 the Greek government annulled the appointment and called for the runner-up consortium, Bouygues-led Thessaloniki Metro (), to take on the project. The design was altered to a fully underground system, with in deep tunnels and using cut-and-cover, for a total system length of , longer than the previous design. The budget also nearly doubled to ( today), of which would be provided directly by the Greek state (jointly through the state budget and the European Regional Development Fund); the EU portion of the funds was conditional on the project being economically viable enough to also attract private funding. A further ₯6 billion would be provided annually to subsidise the agreed ticket price of ₯200 ($ today).
Negotiations were officially terminated on 29 November 1996; the government claimed that companies making up the Makedoniko Metro consortium would not take full responsibility for the construction and operation of the work, that the company had attempted to change the agreed ticket price (to include VAT), and that it would not accept liability for the ₯10 billion in preparatory works. Government memos indicate that the government viewed both its own past actions, as well as those of the Makedoniko Metro management, as "uncouth". Makedoniko Metro challenged the matter at the European Commission, and the project stalled. It eventually sued the Commission for over a billion euros in damages. The European Ombudsman, Jacob Söderman, carried out a two-year investigation into the matter, the most complicated in his office's history, and sided with Makedoniko Metro on the issue of inadequate communication on the part of the Commission, but otherwise rejected its legal arguments.
The government of Costas Simitis campaigned for the construction of the metro as one of its national infrastructure priorities in the 2000 election. With the contract commencement deadline approaching in 2002, Thessaloniki mayor Vasilis Papageorgopoulos, along with representatives from 130 city-based organisations, requested an emergency meeting with Prime Minister Simitis as well as the President of Greece, and threatened a mass rally to protest the potential cancellation of the project. A extension was granted in late 2002 to allow time for the courts to examine the claims of Makedoniko Metro; in January 2003 the European Court of Justice found that the termination of Makedoniko Metro's appointment had been compliant with EU law, while a second ruling a year later found that the Commission had acted lawfully. At the same time, Kouvelas complained at the double standards used for the construction of the Athens Metro, claiming that Thessalonians had spent more of their taxes to subsidise the metro in Athens than it would have cost to build a metro in Thessaloniki. The negative "everything is done in Athens, for Athens" perception resulting from the lack of progress on the metro was acknowledged by internal government briefings. The contract was terminated in 2002 due to a lack of funds associated with the tunnels being deeper than originally planned.
Final proposal With the failure of the concession model, in September 2003 the Ministry of the Environment, Urban Planning and Public Works under Vasso Papandreou decided to tender the metro as a public work, co-financed by the Greek government, the European Union's Regional Development Fund, and loans from the European Investment Bank (whose vice-president at the time, Plutarchos Sakellaris, was a Thessaloniki native). Attiko Metro, the state-owned company which oversaw the construction of the Athens Metro, had its articles of association amended to enable it to oversee construction of the Thessaloniki Metro as well. A consortium was appointed on 7 April 2006 and construction began in June of the same year. The budget was set to ( or today).
In 2018, Elliniko Metro S.A. was overseeing the construction of a two-line, twin-tunnel system composed of Line 1 (the base project) and Line 2 (the Kalamaria Extension). Although Line 1 has been delayed by extensive archaeological works, Line 2's construction is proceeding on schedule. Construction of tunnels for both lines was finished in 2018, and track-laying began in August of that year. Line 1 and Line 2 were expected to be operational by December 2023. Both lines are designed to serve a minimum of 18,000 passengers per hour in each direction, with a 90-second headway. The completed metro will reduce Thessaloniki's greenhouse gas emissions by an estimated 5,000 tons a year, and reduce travel time by up to 66 percent.
Construction Line 1 (Base Project)