A solution to car parking at Balos

The popularity of Balos as a destination for tourists has for many years been a source of problems. The sheer volume of visitors, apart from degrading the attractions of the beach itself, has resulted in severe congestion around the inadequate parking space at the end of the Gramvousa peninsula, from which once can make the descent to the beach by foot. A recent satellite shot from Google Maps, obviously taken on a summer’s evening, shows a line of cars parked at the roadside reaching 1.3 km back from the parking area.

The solution of closing the dirt road up the peninsula to cars and providing a minibus service to make the journey was mooted quite a few years ago, but little had been heard of it recently. However, it is encouraging to know that the matter has not dropped entirely off the local authority’s radar: the municipality of Kissamos is shortly to issue a tender for the creation of a car park at Kaliviani at the bottom of the peninsula, where there is already a ticket station charging 1 euro for admission to the road up the peninsula.

Balos Beach, Gramvousa, Crete
The route to Balos Beach from the car park at the end of the Gramvousa peninsular is a long trek down a stony path. Once the new car park in Kaliviani is open, vehicular travel to the top of the path will only be allowed by bus. Photo: Municipality of Kissamos

The online competitive tender, for a total of 321,767 euros ex VAT, has a deadline of the end of February and will be funded from the EU Maritime and Fisheries Fund programme for 2014-2020. The municipality is aiming to have the parking area ready during the spring so as to be available for the new tourist season, although the mayor of Kissamos, Giorgos Mylonakis, is as yet unwilling to commit himself to a schedule. “We have done proper studies and worked together with the right people, and so the project is to be tendered in the near future. I believe that after the tender we will be able to draw up contracts and proceed with the work. I don’t know if it will be ready this year. I don’t want to give a schedule, but we will try to have it in place this year,” he told Haniotika Nea.

Once the parking area is in operation, cars will not be allowed to go to the end of the route, but will stop in Kaliviani and passengers will be transferred by bus to where the current car park is. The project as planned will comprise:
– surfacing the parking area
– creation of a drystone perimeter wall
– installation of precast concrete channels for rainwater drainage
– creation of entrance and exit routes with flowerbeds containing plants and shrubs.

The parking, once in operation, will not only reduce the tremendous volume of vehicles which daily crowd onto the Gramvousa peninsula in the summer months, causing a nuisance to visitors and downgrading the environment. It will also result in better control of the flow of visitors and safety will be improved, since accidents have occurred in the past through drivers not knowing the route. (www.haniotika-nea.gr)