Commuters will be able to reach Athens’s international airport using the westward extension of the metro’s Line 2 and the new suburban railway before the Olympics, Transport Minister Vasso Papandreou said yesterday during a visit to the site of Aghios Antonios station in Peristeri which is due to start operating in July.

The journey between the airport and the first new station on Line 2 after Sepolia will take about 35 minutes, Papandreou said, noting that the new route would be served by 21 new trains, most of them air conditioned.

The station is expected to serve around 55,000 commuters daily, making life easier for residents of Athens’s western neighborhoods currently plagued by congestion on roads around the Kifissos River, she added.

The next two stations on the route — Thivon and Dimarchiou — are due to open in 2007.