The benefits of a railway running from one end of Crete to the other were laid out at one-day conference on permanent-way transport held at the Heraklion Chamber of Commerce on 21st October 2022. The conference was jointly organised by the Panhellenic Association of Driving Instructors, the Region of Crete, the Municipality of Minoa Pediada, the Municipality of Heraklion and the Sustainable Mobility Unit of the National Technical University of Athens.

Alongside many contributions from academics, the former mayor of Chania Tasos Vamvoukas spoke on the subject of “The train, a safe, reliable and ‘green’ choice for Crete”, referring to the history of discussions about a Cretan railway. He mentioned that he had been favourably surprised by the response to his proposal when he had raised it publicly a few months previously at a conference of the Regional Union of Cretan Municipalities. And he gave reasons why the time is ripe to proceed with this idea:

“The construction of the new international airport and associated multiplication in the numbers of visitors to the island necessitate the further strengthening of the transport network in addition to the VOAK. In this context, the creation of a rail network which would unite the island from one end to the other should become the next immediate goal of the state and regional and local authorities.

“This, of course, if we want to fully exploit the developmental opportunity which we have before us, and not to end up once more in interminable and repeatedly deferred discussions, until the opportunity has become a need and precious years will have been lost, as has happened with the VOAK.”

The advantages

Listing the advantages of the train, he mentioned the speed and punctuality of transport, safety and economy of movement, the increase in the number of passengers who could be served, the adoption of cutting-edge technologies, and the fact that it is an environmentally friendly form of transport, among others. In conclusion, he noted that “the time has come to claim the unification of our island” through sustainable mobility so as not to “miss the train”. (Haniotika Nea, 22nd October 2022)

Past railway projects

The history of projects for a Cretan rail system is a long one. According to an article on Newsnow.gr published in January 2021, the first mention of it was in the newspaper Lefka Ori in May 1884, which suggested the creation of two rail lines on the island. The first would run from near the Customs house in Souda Bay to Chania and later to the province of Kissamos. The second would run from Heraklion to the plain of Messara with a later extension to the port of Kali Limenes on the south coast. Later, in 1893, the Ottoman governor of Crete Mahmud Jelal promised, amongst other projects, a railway line linking Chania, Rethymnon and Heraklion within two years.

However, nothing came of these proposals, and the only railway known to have existed in Crete to date is the 6 km line constructed to carry stone for constructing the port of Heraklion from the Estavromenos quarry at Xeropotamos to the Koule fortress in Heraklion Harbour. It was in operation between 1922 and 1937, and traces of the iron rails can still be seen on the beachside road in the city, the article said. Other local industrial railways may have existed but have not found their way into the historical record.

An academic study

More recently a master thesis published in 2012 by Dimitrios Protonotarios of the School of Architecture and the Built Environment at KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm concluded that a railway line on Crete could be “financially, technically, operationally and legally feasible” if certain obstacles were overcome. The writer suggested that a 145 km single-line electrified track of standard gauge would attract more passengers than commercial traffic and could compete in terms of speed with buses and cars using the VOAK.

He estimated that in its first year of operation the line would carry 650,000 passengers, but commercial traffic would account for only 7 per cent of the total. There would be 17 stations, at Chania, Souda, Kalyves, Vryses, Georgioupoli, Atsipopoulo, Rethymnon, Skaleta, Perama, Geropotamos, Doxaro, Aloides, Damatsa, Gazi, Knossos, Heraklion and Nikos Kazantzakis airport.

Trains would run at a maximum speed of 200 km/h, the service would run every 90 minutes in winter and every 45 minutes in summer, while the railway’s operation would lead to reduction of 2,340 tons in CO2 emissions annually. The cost of construction was estimated at €75 million for expropriations, €3.1 million per kilometer of line, €550,000 per station and around €50 million for 10 trains, while the construction timescale would be 11 years.

The author noted numerous non-technical problems such as negative local reactions and objections to the competition from KTEL. Other problems listed were the geomorphology of the route, the existence of rivers and underground streams between Rethymnon and Heraklion, and the cost and duration of expropriations.

Since that date proposals for a Cretan railway in different forms have continued to surface without any concrete result, and the topic has seemed destined to be victim of the “interminable discussions” described by ex-mayor Tasos Vamvoukas.

A Canadian proposal

In 2017 a Canadian company produced a proposal for a high-speed suspended “string rail” system which would travel between Chania’s Daskalogiannis and Heraklion’s Nikos Kazantzakis airports at speeds of up to 350 km/h, with a total journey time of 25 minutes. The advantages of the system were that it could be multi-level, with a second rail for low-speed cargo and local passenger modules running beneath the main track, and would leave the ground underneath free for urban development.

The proposal allowed for a planned traffic flow of 22 million people per year, with 3,500 passengers per hour in the low season and up to 10,000 passengers per hour in the high season. The average fare was to be set at €15, matching the then current KTEL fare between Chania and Heraklion, which would produce an expected annual revenue of about €330 million.

The CEO of the Canadian company, Sky Way Transport Canada Ltd, submitted the proposal to the chairman of the Crete-based Association of Relief and Solidarity for the Victims of Traffic Accidents, Stavros Polentas, suggesting that it might help to reduce Crete’s ignominious record of fatalities on the VOAK. Mr Polentas then forwarded it to the President of the Republic and ministers in the SYRIZA government.

Apart from the fact that the technology was new and untested, any possible consideration of it would no doubt have been pushed aside by the decision to create a new Heraklion airport at Kastelli, as well as the existing focus on the development of the VOAK. A fuller description of the technology can be found here.

The latest proposal

The most recent, and in the light of current circumstances, most practical proposal for a Cretan railway was put forward in December 2022 in discussions with the ministry for Infrastructure and Transport by Stavros Vlachos, managing director for Greece and the Western Balkans at Alstom SA, the French multinational rolling stock manufacturer which operates worldwide in rail transport markets.

The company, which has participated in many Greek railway projects, including the construction of lines 2, 3 and 4 of the Athens metro, is interested in creating a hybrid tram-suburban rail system which would connect the centre of Heraklion with the new airport at Kastelli. The trains would operate as trams with many local stops within the city of Heraklion, and then run as a suburban railway at greater speeds outside the city.

The 40-km route, M Vlachos said, could be implemented with money from the EU’s Reconstruction Fund, which supports permanent way projects. He noted that local representatives had expressed strong interest in the issue at a recent conference, since the concession agreement for the new airport only provided for a road connection.

According to Mr Vlachos, the development of hybrid tram-train systems travelling at speeds of up to 120 km/h is an established practice in a fair number of regional European cities, and is being studied also for the Cyprus capital of Nicosia. Alstom would provide the trains for the new line, which would be driverless and have a gate system isolating passengers from the line at stations, as is found in many modern metro systems, including that in Thessaloniki.

Possibilities of realisation

The project of a Cretan railway running from one end of the island to the other is fraught with problems, both practical and social. The lack of available funding combined with the entrepreneurial capacity to complete such a project is enough to explain why it has not been implemented to date. It is clear that there is a groundswell of interest at the moment amongst local authorities, prompted by the construction of the new airport at Kastelli, with the pressure that the growing number of passengers will impose even on the new VOAK. However, with the latter set to cost a total of some €2 billion before its completion, it may be that government appetite for another major infrastructure project on the island will be limited.

One major consideration is that any rail system, as Mr Protonotarios pointed out in his thesis, will serve mostly passenger traffic. Large-scale goods movement is mainly from the island’s agricultural production centres to the south towards the northern seaports, and as the thesis also points out, any rail system will be confined to the northern corridor because of the mountainous nature of the rest of the island.

Apart from the possibility of local resistance for environmental reasons, and objections of competition from the KTEL bus owners, another obstacle in our view would be the current pattern of tourist traffic on the island. With the cheap airlines facilitating a move away from package holidays, the “fly-drive”model is set to become increasingly popular. Visitors are choosing their own accommodation, often quite far from the main roads, which means that they will usually need a hire car to reach their destination. Car hire pre-booked at the airports is generally cheaper than when booked locally, and visitors are likely to prefer the convenience of a single mode of transport from the airport, especially in view of the comparatively short distances which are usually involved.