From October, the entire network of the central Athens-Thessaloniki axis will have remote control, signaling and the necessary ETCS systems, according to the timetable presented by the Minister of State Giorgos Gerapetritis, during the briefing he gave yesterday to the Standing Committee on Production and Trade of the Parliament :

Referring to the accident in Tempe, the Minister of State said that the remote control in Larissa was handed over to the government in 2019, damaged, because there had been a fire at the beginning of that year. Remote control was restored to full operation in Larissa on 1.11.2022 and on the night of the accident the remote control center was “fully operational”.

At the same time, the government made public the documents he submitted to Parliament the Minister of State regarding the delivery times and the commissioning of the train signaling projects with contract 717 of 2014, in response to what SYRIZA officials support regarding the percentage of completion of the projects during the days of the SYRIZA-ANEL government.

As can be seen from the document, during the period of government by SYRIZA, only the Athens Railway Center (SKA) – Oinoi section of the signaling project was handed over to OSE for exploitation (this happened in 2016), while it had been assigned to OSE without put into operation the section Platy – TX5 (in Thessaloniki) – which became a reality in September 2020.

The table states that the completion rate of the signaling project has reached 69.23%, while it was at 32.69% in 2016 and the remote control project is at 38.9%, while it had not started during the SYRIZA-ANEL government .

At the same time, Mr. Gerapetritis, in order to respond to the claim of the SYRIZA executives who claim that the local remote control system in Larissa was not working, also submitted the document of receipt from the OSE for use by the Orphans’ ETHA – Larissa department, in November 2022 It is noted that one of the officers of the OSE who received the system was the inspector Dimitris Nikolaou, who is going to testify without trial about what happened on the fateful night of February 28

The two station masters who “unfortunately, were not in their place at the critical time” were foreseen.

“I want it to be explicitly recorded in the minutes. The centre remote control of Larissa it was working absolutely. All that day all train routings were done automatically via the remote control center. It worked perfectly. What unfortunately happened was that the stationmaster in question chose, instead of doing the automatic marking, which would obviously have prevented the damage, to do manual routing. And there happened a series, a sequence of tragic events which cumulatively led to the accident”, said Giorgos Gerapetritis and added:

“Automatic engraving did not occur, although the board was working. THE station master he thought, with all certainty, that the keys were on the ascending line, while he was on the descending, he finally made a diagonal movement and found himself on the opposite track. In addition, the station master was not found in front of the control panel, to see the movement of the train. And there was no automatic marking and it was mistakenly assumed that the keys were on the rise when they were on the descent, and there was no confirmation of the route the train was on, through the remote control panel that was there and working.”

In addition, Mr. Gerapetritis pointed out that since there was remote control in Larissa, automatic marking had to be done, through remote control, because this was an obligation imposed by the OSE itself, with its special circular and reference to the Regulation, on 23.12. 2022. “There was no automatic engraving. Obviously it was a personal choice,” said the Minister of State.