Transportation

The Athens Mass Transit System consists of a large bus fleet, a trolleybus fleet that mainly serves the downtown area, the city's Metro, a tram line connecting the southern suburbs to the city centre, and the Athens Suburban Railway service.

Athens Metro

The Athens Metro is more commonly known in Greece as the Attiko Metro (Greek: ?????? M????). While its main purpose is transport, it also houses Greek artifacts found during construction of the system. The Athens Metro supports an operating staff of 387 and runs two of the three metro lines; its two lines (red and blue) were constructed largely during the 1990s, and the initial sections opened in January 2000, and the lines run entirely underground. The metro network operates a fleet of 42 trains consisting of 252 cars, with a daily occupancy of 550,000 passengers. The Blue Line runs from the western suburbs, namely the Egaleo station, through the central Monastiraki and Syntagma stations to Doukissis Plakentias avenue in the northeastern suburb of Halandri, covering a distance of 16 km (10 mi), then ascending to ground level and reaching Eleftherios Venizelos International Airport, using the Suburban Railway infrastructure and extending its distance to 39 km (24 mi). The Red Line, in counterpart, runs from Aghios Antonios to Aghios Dimitrios and covers a distance of 11.6 km (7 mi). Extensions to both these lines are under construction, most notably westwards to Piraeus, southwards to the Old Hellinikon Airport East Terminal (the future Metropolitan Park), and eastward toward the easternmost suburb of Aghia Paraskevi. The eastern part is actually no extension per se, but rather an opening of new stations between the Ethniki Amyna and Doukissis Plakentias stations. The spring 2007 extension from Monastiraki westwards, to Egaleo, connected some of the main night life hubs of the city, namely the ones of Gazi (Kerameikos station) with Psirri (Monastiraki station) and the city centre (Syntagma station).

Electric railway (ISAP)
The third line, not run by the Athens Metro, is the ISAP (Greek: ????), the Electric Railway Company. This is the Green line of the Athens Metro as shown on the adjacent map, and unlike the red and blue routes running entirely underground, ISAP runs either above-ground or below-ground at different sections of its journey. This same operation runs the original metro line from Piraeus to Kifisia; it serves 22 stations, with a network length of 25.6 km (15.9 mi), an operating staff of 730 and a fleet of 44 trains and 243 cars, and a daily occupancy rate of 600,000 passengers. The historic Green Line, a 25.6 km (16 mi)-long and 24-station line which forms the oldest and for the most part runs at ground level, connects the port of Piraeus to the northern suburb of Kifissia, and is set to be extended to Agios Stefanos, a suburb located 23 km (14 mi)[citation needed] to the north of the city centre, reaching to 36 km (22 mi).

Suburban rail (Proastiakos)

The Proastiakós connects Eleftherios Venizelos International Airport to the city of Corinth, 80 km (50 mi) west of Athens, via the central Larissa train station and the port of Piraeus, and is sometimes considered the fourth line of the Athens Metro. The Suburban Rail network currently extends to a length of 120 km (75 mi), and is expected to stretch to 281 km (175 mi) by 2010. The Proastiakos will be extended to Xylokastro west of Athens and Chalkida. The urban and suburban railway system is managed by three different companies; namely ISAP, Attiko Metro (lines 2 & 3) and Proastiakós (line 4).

Buses

Ethel (Greek: ????) (Etaireia Thermikon Leoforeion), or Thermal Bus Company, is the main operator of buses in Athens. Its network consists of about 300 bus lines which span the entire Attica Basin, with an operating staff of 5,327, and a fleet of 1,839 buses. Of those 1,839 buses 416 run on compressed natural gas, making up the largest fleet of natural gas-powered buses in Europe.
Besides being served by a fleet of natural-gas and diesel buses, the Athens metropolitan area is also served by trolleybuses - or electric buses, as they are referred to in the name of the operating company. The network operated by Electric Buses of the Athens and Pireaus Region, or ILPAP (Greek: ?????), consists of 22 lines with an operating staff of 1,137. All of the 366 trolleybuses are equipped to enable them to run on diesel in case of power failure.

Tram

Athens Tram SA operates a fleet of 35 vehicles, which serve 48 stations, employ 345 people with an average daily occupancy of 65,000 passengers. The tram network spans a total length of 27 km (17 mi) and covers ten Athenian suburbs. This network runs from Syntagma Square to the southwestern suburb of Palaio Faliro, where the line splits in two branches; the first runs along the Athens coastline toward the southern suburb of Voula, while the other heads toward the Piraeus district of Neo Faliro. The network covers the majority of the Saronic coastline. Further extensions are planned towards the major commercial port of Piraeus. The expansion to Piraeus will include 12 new stations, increase the overall length of the tram by 5.4 km (3 mi), and increase the overall transportation network.

Eleftherios Venizelos International Airport

Athens is served by the state-of-the-art Eleftherios Venizelos International Airport (AIA) located near the town of Spata, in the eastern Messoghia plain, some 35 km (22 mi) east of Athens. The airport was awarded the "European Airport of the Year 2004" Award. Intended as an expandable hub for air travel in southeastern Europe, it was constructed in a record 51 months costing 2.2 billion euros, and employing a staff of 14,000. An express bus service is provided, connecting the airport to the metro system, and 2 express bus services connect the airport to the port at Piraeus and the city centre respectively. Eleftherios Venizelos accommodates 65 landings and take-offs per hour, with its 24 passenger boarding bridges, 144 check-in counters and broader 150,000 m2 (1,614,587 sq ft) main terminal, and a commercial area of 7,000 m2 (75,347 sq ft) which includes cafes, duty-free shops, and a small museum. In 2007, the airport handled 16,538,390 passengers, an increase of 9.7% over the previous year of 2006. Of those 16,538,390 passengers, 5,955,387 passed through the airport for domestic flights, and 10,583,003 passengers travelled through for international flights. Beyond the dimensions of its passenger capacity, AIA handled 205,294 total flights in 2007, or approximately 562 flights per day.

Railways, highways and ferry connections

Athens is the hub of the country's national railway system (OSE), connecting the capital with major cities across Greece and abroad (Istanbul, Sofia, and Bucharest). Ferries departing from the major port of Piraeus connect the city to the numerous Greek islands of the Aegean Sea. There are two main highways; one heading towards the western city of Patras in Peloponessus (GR-8A, E94) and the other heading to the north, towards Greece's second largest city, Thessaloniki (GR-1, E75). From 2001 to 2004, a ring road toll-motorway (Attiki Odos) was gradually completed, extending from the western industrial suburb of Elefsina all the way to the Athens International Airport. The Ymittos Periphery Highway is a separate section of Attiki Odos connecting the eastern suburb of Kaisariani to the northeastern town of Glyka Nera; this is where it meets the main part of the ring road. The span of the Attiki Odos in all is 65 km (40 mi).