The management company of the Athens highway ring Attiki Odos announced on Thursday morning that all parts of the motorway reopened at 08:00 on Thursday morning, with unobstructed flow of traffic on all sections of the road.
No tolls will be charged until Sunday midnight, January 30, to facilitate drivers, due to the ongoing problems in surrounding roads.
An operation to free the remaining trapped vehicles and remove them from Attiki Odos was underway and expected to conclude in the morning, the statement said adding that the vehicles will be transferred to a specially prepared section of the parking area at the Athens International Airport “Eleftherios Venizelos”.
The company has asked that owners come to collect their cars and announced that a special bus service has been arranged in cooperation with the General Secretariat of Civil Protection to transport car owners to that location, with buses departing from the Kifissias junction from 09:00 until 19:00 on Thursday to take them to the airport.
Traffic on Attiki Odos collapsed due the snowfall since Monday noon and thousands of people remained stranded in the snow and cold for some 30 hours, until the Civil Protection decided even with delay to intervene and have soldiers, fire fighters and policemen deployed to evacuate them.
According to Civil Protection over 4,500 people among them children, babies and elderly and more than 2,500 cars were evacuated by Wednesday noon.
The company promised to pay 2,000 euros as compensation, however, per car and not per driver or passenger.
Affected motorists and passengers say that they will seek the legal way to claim higher compensation.
