Intercity rail service restarted in Greece on Wednesday for the first time since a head-on collision between two trains killed 57 people more than three weeks ago, according to operator Hellenic Train.
Trains between Piraeus and the capital’s international airport, as well as those between Athens and Chalcis and two other local lines in the west Peloponnese, have resumed service, according to the business.
Traffic on the line where the February 28 crash occurred, the country’s worst train disaster, will not restart until April 1, according to acting Transport Minister Georgios Gerapetritis.
That line is the busiest in the nation, stretching 600 kilometres (370 miles) from Athens to the country’s second-largest city, Thessaloniki, in the north.
The rail disaster sparked weeks of enraged and occasionally violent protests in Greece. Piling pressure on Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis’ conservative administration ahead of May elections.
The majority of the victims were university students coming from a long weekend.
Following the tragedy, Greece’s transport minister resigned. The stationmaster who was on duty at the time of the mishap, as well as three other railway officials, have been charged and could face life in prison.
Nonetheless, Greece’s rail watchdog discovered in an investigation that significant safety flaws pervaded the network. including insufficient basic training of critical staff.
On Tuesday, train drivers demanded improved rail crossing surveillance, improved tunnel illumination, bridge inspection data, and the removal of debris and overgrown vegetation from tracks.
Railway unions had long warned about problems, claiming the network was underfunded, understaffed and accident-prone after a decade of spending cuts.
The drivers’ union said Tuesday that repeated warnings were “downplayed or not taken seriously.”
At the demonstrations’ peak, more than 65,000 people poured onto the streets demanding accountability and calling for Mitsotakis’s resignation, with some accusing the government of being “murderers”.
