The first race of the next Olympics, to be held in Athens in 2004, is
already under way - the race to ensure that new infrastructure planned
for the big event will be completed before the Games begin.
Infrastructure
projects in and around the city of Athens, will give a new face to the
ancient and famous city, which has attracted millions of visitors over
many centuries.
The developments
under way include highways, an international airport to cope with more
than 16 million passengers a year, and a metro system to serve some
450,000 passengers per day.
One of the highways under construction is the 70 kilometre Attiki Odos,
or Athens Ring Road, where the contractors are using state-of-the-art
drilling equipment to ensure that the road will be ready for use by
June, 2004 in order to ease the pressure of traffic in the area during
the Olympic Games.
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| One
of many connecting tunnels along the route. |
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| Mountain
crawlers: A fleet of surface rigs at work on the new Athens Ring
Road. Here, the Immitos site. |
ACTOR SA
leads the Attiki Odos joint venture and sub-contractor Theodorou is
using a fleet of six Atlas Copco crawler rigs at two of the main sites.
Theodoros
Theodorou, runs the family business together with his son George, while
his other son Dimiti is also a driller and runs his own business. Theodoros
has three of the company's rigs - an Atlas Copco ROC F9 and two ROC
812 units - working full time at Mount Immitos. The rigs drill 89 mm
holes with T51 drill rods and average production is 40 drillmetres per
hour with the ROC F9 and 36 dm/hour with each of the two ROC 812s.
Meanwhile,
George Theodorou has two ROC F9 rigs and one ROC 812 working half the
time at Immitos and the other half at Liosia, using the same parameters.
The Theodorou
family has used Atlas Copco rigs for many years and George Theodorou
comments: "We are extremely happy with the reliability and consistently
good performances we get from these efficient machines."
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| Taking
shape: A section of the new Athens Ring Road snakes its way across
the landscape at Liosia. |
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| Setting
up: An Atlas Copco ROC F9 crawler at the Liosia site. |
New environments
The projects in the Athens area are all part of a broad-based environmental
programme designed to reduce the number of cars in the city centre by
250,000 per day and to reduce air pollution by 35%.
Further planned
improvements include a biological waste water treatment programme to
upgrade the quality of the maritime environment, an extensive mountain
protection plan to increase the number of green areas around the city,
restoration of the city centre and a project to connect all the archaeological
sites and museums in the area.
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A coast-to-coast highway
will span the country
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