Sidewalks, bus stops, Athens transport network banes
Apart from its aging fleet of buses, a thorn in Athens’ urban transport is the network of stops where, in addition to problematic locations in several cases, there are broken canopies, damaged seats, tilted poles etc. Moreover, cars parked in front of bus stops make a bad situation worse. “Almost all of Athens in terms of road infrastructure does not meet specifications and, on top of this, we are additionally placing bollards, [new] phone line boxes, signposts or even bus stops. However, in order to install these, the sidewalk must be more than 2 meters wide,” explains Alexandros Bartzokas-Tsiompras, the general coordinator of the program “Walkable Athens: Model Geospatial Walkability Observatory of the Municipality of Athens.” The sidewalks of the Municipality of Athens have a total length of 2,000 kilometers, the condition of which is quite problematic. More specifically, 45% of the sidewalks have an average width of less than 1 m or are nonexistent. Also, only 24% have a width greater than 2 m. In particular, almost six out of 10 sidewalks are in bad condition, while 46% have obstacles (signposts, traffic lights, bollards, railings etc). Moreover, 410 bus stops (38.4%) do not have shelters, 111 (10.4%) have shelters but are in poor condition, while 486 (45.6%) have shelters in good condition. [Nikos Kokkalias]
