Why is Athens SO infuriating when it comes to public transport?
Why do buses take forever to arrive?
Why are metro waiting times so unpredictable?
What can be done about the cars flooding the pavements and turning every walk into an obstacle course?
I wanted to understand, so I decided the best thing would probably be to just ask someone whose life revolves around making this city a more liveable place.
So I decided to have a coffee with Adam Markakis. Adam writes Take Back the City, a newsletter about urbanism, policy, and what it takes to make cities work for people. He founded Astylab, a network bringing together the people and organisations trying to fix how we build and live in cities, and Kineo, a start-up that helped hundreds of Athenians replace car trips with bicycles.
He lives in Athens and is raising two young children here, and has spent more time than most thinking about why the city works the way it does — and what it would take to make it work differently.
Enjoy this interview, and if you have any more questions for Adam, drop me a line.
PS: If you’re in a hurry, just scroll down for the news, they’re here!
Ioana: When I lived in Bucharest, I used to drive. In many ways, it’s quite similar to Athens, in terms of traffic.
When I moved here, I decided to leave my car behind. It was complicated to register it anyway, and I thought, okay, I’ll use public transport, avoid parking stress and costs.
But that only lasted about a year. Eventually, I went crazy. I felt stuck, like I couldn’t get anywhere. A trip could take half an hour or an hour and a half; it was completely unpredictable. That’s when I decided to learn how to drive a moped. It was a decision out of sheer desperation, but honestly, it changed everything for me. It gave me back a sense of freedom.
So let’s start with this - why do you think Athens is the way it is? Why is it still so behind when it comes to walkability, green space, public transport?
Adam: That’s how most cities started out. Copenhagen was like this in the ’60s and ’70s, Amsterdam too, Paris even 20–25 years ago, London — pretty much all major cities followed a similar path. After the Second World War, when cities were expanding, the dominant thinking in urban planning and architecture was very clear: a modernist vision where the car was seen as the most efficient mode of transport, and cities should be built around it.
The more interesting question is why we haven’t transitioned away from it.
First, the Greek state is highly centralized—around 75% of the budget is controlled by the central government and ministries. That leaves municipalities without the resources or authority to drive this kind of transformation.
Second, there’s a cultural dimension. Greece was, until relatively recently, a much poorer country compared to those I mentioned. When significant funding started coming in—from the EU in the ’80s, ’90s, and especially around the Olympics—the response was often overconsumption and a desire to display newfound wealth.
Even today, when I talk to people a bit older than me—I’m 37, so not that much older—and tell them that my main mode of transport is a bike, they often look at me like something’s wrong. Either I don’t have enough money, or I’m a bit crazy, or maybe an anarchist or an idealist—everyone has their own interpretation.
Ioana: Cars are a status symbol. That’s something that comes up repeatedly in my research. For some people, it’s almost life-defining. Decisions about whether to move to a neighbourhood, or even where exactly to live within the neighborhood, often depend on access to parking. Alternative solutions rarely even enter the discussion.
Yes. But Another major factor—among several—is the general lack of strategy and long-term thinking around urban planning and development. It’s never really been a priority for the central government, and we haven’t built much institutional capacity around it.
As a result, public space in Athens is limited—we don’t have much unbuilt or flexible space. And what we see now in Athens is a very high rate of car ownership—something like more than eight cars for every ten people.
In comparison, cities like Paris are at about half that, and London even lower. This isn’t accidental; it’s the result of a lack of coherent policy and vision. We’ve never really defined how we want to live in our cities, or developed policies with a long-term horizon to support that.
Is that also the case for green spaces—for parks, and for the ongoing loss of whatever little green is left?
Yes, absolutely—it follows the same pattern. The core issue is that we don’t think systemically. In cities, nothing exists in isolation. You can’t talk about parking without acknowledging the trade-offs of having free parking on every street. And you can’t simultaneously demand more parking, wider pavements, more green space, and more housing—it simply doesn’t work. Urban space is finite. Every choice excludes another: if you allocate space to housing, it can’t be a park; if you give it to cars, you lose space for pavements, bike lanes, or trees.
Without strategy, conviction, and a clear vision, you default to the easiest options—and that’s how we ended up here. Creating meaningful green space in Kypseli, for example, would require difficult choices: either removing a significant share of parked cars to make room for trees, or buying and demolishing buildings to create open space. Both are complex, politically and socially.
So what happens instead—even at the level of individual citizens—is that public space is treated as a free-for-all. Everyone tries to claim as much of it as they can for themselves. And in that context, people are far more likely to use that space for parking than to invest in green areas.
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What is actually being done, though?
The biggest problem is that whatever is being done isn’t connected to a broader strategy or backed by long-term commitment. For that, you need two things: first, real engagement with local residents, and second, involvement from stakeholders who will continue working on these issues beyond any single political term—after someone leaves a municipality or a ministry.
Right now, everything operates in closed silos. And when that happens, even initiatives that are moving in the right direction have very little chance of lasting over time or creating real impact. In a way, the system is set up to fail.
Take housing, for example. Right now, there are around €2 billion spread across more than 100 different mechanisms that are, in theory, meant to address the issue. The harder—but more effective—approach would be to take that funding and actually build housing.
But where would they even be built? Athens is already overcrowded.
Not really—I’d definitely challenge that. It’s overcrowded based on how we live today, yes. If we assume that everyone coming to Athens needs to bring 0.9 cars with them, then of course it doesn’t work.
But in terms of density, Athens isn’t exceptional. Its size compared to other capitals isn’t unusual either, and they work. Paris works. Singapore works. Hong Kong works.
Even cruise ships work—we pay thousands per week to stay in environments that are three times denser than Athens.
The difference is that those spaces are designed around walking, proximity, and the absence of cars. That’s the real issue: not density, but how we organize life within that density.
Take fuel price increases—the state’s response is a fuel subsidy, which reinforces car use. That’s exactly the wrong direction. If anything, support should be flexible—usable for transport, housing, or alternatives like bikes or public transit.
Do you think the metro will solve anything once the new stations are finished?
It will definitely help, but it won’t solve the problem on its own. Infrastructure like the metro is necessary—it’s a foundation for change, and it needs to be expanded, since many areas of Athens are still underserved. But building it isn’t enough. If you don’t create incentives—or disincentives—around daily car use, people won’t change their behavior.
We saw this with Kineo, the startup I mentioned. In a couple of years, we got around 2,000 people to try e-bikes. About 20% dropped off after a month—it wasn’t for them. But the other 80% kept using them, and around 20% actually replaced car use entirely with biking.
That shift didn’t happen by accident. It required both incentives—like making it affordable, around €50 per month—and ongoing support: guidance, training, practical advice on routes and safety. It’s not easy, but if you invest that effort, you can change behavior. If you just build infrastructure and leave it at that, nothing much changes. It has to be systemic.
Why are waiting times for public transport so long? For buses, you might say it’s traffic—but I once saw 55 minutes on the board and thought, this can’t be real. And the metro times are also… quite bad.
It’s actually pretty straightforward. We have roughly the same number of trains—or maybe even fewer—than we did 20–25 years ago when the metro started, but we now have more stations, more residents, and more tourists. So it’s just basic math.
The same applies to buses. They’re expanding the fleet, but they don’t have enough drivers. That’s the issue. They were able to secure EU funding—ESPA—to purchase buses, which is good and makes sense. But you can’t just buy the buses and then figure everything else out afterward.
That’s the core issue: it’s not always corruption, although that exists. More often, it’s a lack of capacity, planning, and long-term vision, combined with a difficult political environment.
I remember when they introduced paying directly on the bus—it was presented as this big step forward. But in most Europan countries (including the Balkans), that’s been standard for years. I actually arrived in Athens from Bucharest on the very day they launched it, on the airport bus. You know how crowded the X95 gets—you just squeeze in and try to find space. I got on, put my luggage down, and started looking for where to pay. Nothing. Then the driver came around asking for paper tickets. I told him, “But I read that from today you can pay on the bus.” And he just looked at me and said, “Do you believe everything you read about Greece?” I had to get off, buy a ticket, and wait for the next bus.
Yeah, it’s the same with things like the Thessaloniki metro. When it opened, you couldn’t even pay by card—only cash. It’s kind of absurd.
So we’ve talked a lot about problems. Let me ask you something lighter: what are some of your favorite places in Athens? Where do you go to recharge, to feel like you can breathe a bit—not surrounded by traffic, noise, and exhaust?
I live in Pagrati, and I really like it—especially around Archelaou, near the Alsos. It’s actually greener than people might think, especially compared to Kypseli. You have the National Garden about ten minutes away, and Hymettus is also quite close, so there’s a different balance.
Of course, there are still too many cars, but outside of peak hours—when people are commuting—it’s relatively calm. You can walk around and enjoy it. For Athens, that’s already a kind of balance.
I also really like the walk around Areopagitou—it’s one of the best urban walks, not just in Athens but globally. And then there are these small, unexpected pockets—places that feel like they belong to a different city. I was in Koukaki recently and came across a street outside a school that looked like something out of Paris—trees, benches, a small pedestrianized stretch, like a little oasis. Completely random, not part of a broader plan, but it shows what’s possible.
Overall, I actually like Athens a lot. The fundamentals are strong—the geography is incredible, the density is, in my view, an advantage, and there’s a deep, layered history, not just ancient but modern as well. With the right approach, it could really become the best version of itself.
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That’s it. Have a great weekend and do write back. Even if it’s just to complain.
Ioana
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