Greece: 1 scheme to know about before you drive in.
Kalamata has one driving restriction on our books: the Έγκριση μέτρων ρύθμισης της κυκλοφορίας στην οδό Κολοκοτρώνη, με… (limited traffic zone). What is a limited traffic zone?
Sources last read on 2026-09-24, from the authorities' own pages. The next scheduled check is 2026-12-23.
Kalamata is the capital of Messinia and the town most drivers pass through on the way to the Mani peninsula and to Pylos, and on 18 October 2018 the Αποκεντρωμένη Διοίκηση Πελοποννήσου, Δυτικής Ελλάδας και Ιονίου gazetted a decision that makes three short stretches of its centre pedestrian streets. 🔑 The three, in the act's own words, are «της οδού Σφακτηρίας από την οδό Κολοκοτρώνη έως την οδό Σταδίου», «της οδού Καπετάν Κρόμπα από την οδό Αριστομένους έως την οδό Σφακτηρίας» and «της οδού Αναπλιώτη από την οδό Αριστομένους έως την οδό Σφακτηρίας».
All three run off or towards Αριστομένους, the long central avenue, in the block of streets behind it. 🔑 What makes this act usable is the clause that introduces them.
The designation is «ως πεζόδρομων, που προβλέπονται στο εγκεκριμένο πολεοδομικό σχέδιο της Καλαμάτας» — as pedestrian streets that are ALREADY provided for in the town's approved plan, certified by the municipal planning department's βεβαίωση 1745/11-4-2018. 🚨 That single phrase is why this record exists and why its sister act in the same city does not have one.
A Greek traffic-regulation decision cannot itself turn a street into a pedestrian street; the town plan has to have done it first, and this act's own tenth condition says so, requiring a separate ministerial procedure «για πεζόδρομους που δεν προβλέπονται στο ισχύον πολεοδομικό σχέδιο».
Six weeks earlier, in ΦΕΚ Β' 3796/04.09.2018, the same authority approved the pedestrianisation of οδός Ιατροπούλου «με την προϋπόθεση της ολοκλήρωσης της διαδικασίας τροποποίησης του εγκεκριμένου Σχεδίου Πόλεως Καλαμάτας» — conditional on a plan change this project searched the gazette for and did not find. 🚫 So Ιατροπούλου is named on this page and encoded nowhere. ⚠️ Two things this act does that are not closures: it widens the pavements of οδός Κολοκοτρώνη between Σφακτηρίας and Αναγνωσταρά and between Αναγνωσταρά and Αγ.
Νικολάου, and it reverses the direction of the remaining, still-driveable part of Αναπλιώτη so that traffic runs away from the pedestrianised stretches.
Κολοκοτρώνη stays open to traffic. 🚨 And the act refuses to give a commencement date: its measures «ισχύουν από την τοποθέτηση της κατάλληλης οριζόντιας και κατακόρυφης σήμανσης», from the moment the signing goes up, which the municipality carries out. `effective_from` is null for that stated reason.