Climate

The city experiences a Mediterranean climate. Those north of Thessaloniki experience a continental climate, with cold winters.

Transportation

Thessaloniki is accessed with E75 from Athens and E85 from Serres and Sofia. In the early 1970s, the motorway reached Thessaloniki and was the last section of the GR-1 to be completed. In the 1980s construction begun on the 4-lane bypass of Thessaloniki, which was finally opened to traffic in 1988, running from the west industrial side of the city up to the other side of Thessaloniki to its southeast approaching Thermi and Halkidiki. It has recently been upgraded with new junctions and improved motorway features. The latest motorway expansion was Via Egnatia northwest of Thessaloniki. The construction of the much promised 9.6km long Metro network, will start in June 2006 as was announced by the recent Minister of Public Works. Works will last around 6,5 years and when completed in late 2012, it will improve traffic congestion in the city center. Public transport in Thessaloniki is currently served only by buses.
The city is a major railway hub for the Balkans, with direct connections to Sofia, Skopje, Belgrade, Moscow, Vienna, Budapest, Bucharest, Istanbul as well as Athens and other major destinations in Greece. Air traffic of the city is served by Makedonia International Airport with both International and Domestic flights. The short length of the airport's two runways means that it cannot support long-haul flights, although there are plans for major expansion.
As the metropolitan area population expands to over one million inhabitants, so does the emergence of related problems. These primarily include an increase in traffic congestion, the lack of adequate parking facilities as well as an overconstruction of tightly packed, concrete blocks of apartment buildings. The construction of a subway line that will stretch along the city's central districts began on June 25, 2006 and is expected to be completed by the year 2012. A new tunnel is also proposed to link the port area in the western part of the city with the eastern section. However, considerable opposition has been raised to this project.

Sports

Thessaloniki has a long tradition in sports, specially in football (soccer). The first team that was established officially was Iraklis in 1908. Aris was established by a group of young friends in 1914. PAOK and Apollon Kalamarias were established in 1926 by Greek refugees from Constantinople (Istanbul) and Pontus in the wake of the Greco-Turkish War. Today there are many football teams in Thessaloniki, while the four major teams participate in the Super League Greece and on many occasions in the UEFA Cup.
Aris and PAOK are also major team in Greek basketball having won many championships and cups.

This article is being published under the General Public Licence GNU and is retrieved by the Free Encyclopedia Wikipedia-Keyword "Thessaloniki".

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