Nikos Tachiaos

Deputy Transport and Infrastructure Minister Nikos Tachiaos stressed the need to redefine the framework of public-private partnerships (PPP), given the ambitious fiscal goals that the country must achieve, in an interview to the Athens-Macedonian News Agency on Saturday.

Test runs began in Athens on Tuesday for 32 of 140 new electric buses that road transport organization OSY has bought from Chinese company Yutong.

Based on the supply contract, they will have to circulate 18 hours a day, without passengers, until they complete 5,000 km in daily traffic conditions.

Infrastructure and Transport Minister Christos Staikouras and his deputy, Nikos Tachiaos, visited the Katechaki and Veikou tunnel boring sites on the under-construction Line 4 of the Athens Metro on Monday and confirmed that the first section of the extension is expected to be completed by 2030.

Despite the complaints about the traffic congestion caused by the construction of a flyover on a ring road in Thessaloniki, the Infrastructure Ministry has categorically rejected any possibility of suspending the project, as the inconvenience will be temporary and the benefits will be permanent.

It will take at least two years before the railroad network is restored in Thessaly, the central Greek region that suffered immense destruction after a mega-storm in September, Deputy Infrastructure and Transport Minister Nikos Tachiaos said in Parliament on Monday.

The first of two massive tunnel borers that will be put to work on the extension of the Athens metro is being assembled, the president of Attiko Metro SA announced on Tuesday.

In a post on social media, Nikos Tachiaos published photographs of the construction site on Katehaki Avenue in the Athens suburb of Ellinoroson where the assembly is taking place. 

Greece's northern port city of Thessaloniki will have its own metro system ready by 2023, General Secretary of Public Works Giorgos Karayiannis said Thursday during a worksite inspection.

There is no question that either Nikos Tachiaos or Constantinos Zervas will be elected mayor of Thessaloniki on Sunday. What is at issue is whether either will be able to run the municipal authority.

With just over 60 percent of votes counted on Monday morning, the conservative New Democracy-backed candidate for Thessaloniki mayor Nikos Tachiaos was projected to secure 22.56 percent while Constantinos Zervas and Giorgos Orphanos fought it out for second place with 14.76 percent and 14.41 percent respectively ahead of the runoff next weekend.

New Democracy leader Kyriakos Mitsotakis expressed on Friday his confidence that the country "will turn the page," and a major "political shift" will take place.