The State counselors judged that "due to the new uses that are expected to attract a large volume of visitors (e.g. conference center, hotels), it is necessary to prepare a new traffic study or to update the existing one for the immediate area of each project and, based on of this, the planning of the required transport project connecting with the road network of the region".
"The specific study, which is not and is not titled as a traffic study but is a study of traffic impacts and the conclusions of which were incorporated into the EIA, diagnosed a series of impacts from the final implementation of the project on the road network of the Municipality of Piraeus and made a forecast up to in the year 2027 of the traffic loads in the specific area, the increase of which is attributed in advance to the operation of a new cruise terminal.
These effects, according to the study, based on the existing environmental information, will be mitigated to a certain extent mainly with the completion of the mass transport projects and mainly lines 3 and 4 of the metro. The relevant assumptions of the study regarding these issues and, in particular, the reduction of passenger traffic at the Passenger Port from the year 2009 to the year 2014 and the estimate of an increase but not a return to the levels of the year 2009 in the year 2030, the predicted increase in the traffic load on the affected roads of the Municipality's road network during the first year of operation of the projects and the mitigation of this in the year 2027 support, in principle, the judgment of the administration at the current stage of environmental licensing that the implementation of the considered project is feasible design in this regard.
In view of the relationship of communication and complementarity of the stages of the environmental licensing of plans and projects, but also of the provisions of the new Regulatory Plan for the functional interconnection of port activities with the urban fabric, through integrated traffic planning, as well as for the preparation of a special plan with traffic directions organization for the tourism requirements that will come from the cruise (see State Council of Ministers 547/2022), it is possible and mandatory, at the same time, to prepare a comprehensive traffic study during the stage of the environmental licensing of the projects or during the revision of the already approved environmental conditions or when approving new ones.
This study will be uniform for all the planning projects, will make use of the existing environmental information from where and if it comes from and, in particular, will take into account the findings and estimates of the above study and the traffic studies of the Municipality of Piraeus in the context of Sustainable Urban Mobility Plan and the Ministry of Culture for the Central Port of Piraeus.
The study will assess and evaluate the changes that are going to occur in the traffic and general operation of the city both at the level of the immediate study area (traffic arrangements and changes in the area around the port) and at the level of the wider study area at city level.
The implementation of the projects of the plan, already licensed and not, will not start before the preparation, completion and approval of the above traffic study in the context of the environmental licensing of the projects. In the event, moreover, that after the approval of the above study there is a need to modify the design, the modification of the presidential decree should be done before the implementation of the projects".
