The Mayor of Tirana, Erion Veliaj, today presented one of the most innovative projects for public transport, the one known as Bus Rapid Transit, which will affect the main lines of the city, such as Kinostudio-Kombinat, the Ring and the New Tirana line.
In the presentation panel, apart from Veliaj, there were also the team of German GIZ experts, led by Christian Mettke, the former director of the Department of Transport for London, John Barry, representatives of city and intercity transport companies and European mobility experts, it was discussed about the changes that public transport has undergone in Tirana, the innovations of the BRT project, and the investments that the Municipality of Tirana is expected to make in the future.
Mayor Veliaj said that public transport is an issue that deserves a serious discussion based on facts, not opinions. “Urban transport has been in the attention of the public debate due to populism and the fact that the campaign is approaching, now I’m waiting when the planes and trains will start for free, but I don’t know if they are talking to Elon Musk that SPACE X will also give free travel for all voters in Albania. But, we all understand that only such proposals can be expected from the ‘blue horse’! When you see the horse coming to Tirana, you remember that we have heard these tales before, but this is the moment to have a serious conversation. We can have different opinions, but we cannot have different facts,” he said.
Focusing on public transport in Tirana, Veliaj showed some concrete figures. “We have doubled the dedicated network of bus lanes: from a network of 5 kilometers, today it is a network of 10 kilometers. We have added 3 new bus lines, which did not exist before. We have increased from 169 km, which was the entire transport network, to 375 km. We have doubled the network and the existing lines have been extended; so with the same price, you can do double the itineraries today. We have increased the number of suburban lines to 17, from 8 lines in 2015. Today we have forgotten, but many of the former municipalities could not come to Tirana by bus. The discussions about whether the bus is coming from Farka, from Baldushku, from Krraba, from Peza, from Vaqarri seem like a fairy tale from the past, but today they are a reality. I’m not saying we’re perfect, but I’m saying where we found the situation with the blue horse and where we are today,” he said.
Veliaj underlined that bus stops have been added and the waiting time for citizens has decreased. “We had 337 stations in 2015, today we went to 469 stations. Stations have increased by 40%. Today we are in a situation where the frequency of lines from 37 minutes is an average of 7 minutes. We waited on average over half an hour at the station, today the average wait is 7 minutes. As we speak, there are about 420 buses serving the city. We found 100 or so buses, today there are 420 buses that transport 9,000 passengers per hour. If these 9,000 passengers were in cars, 9,000 per hour, imagine what would happen to the traffic,” he declared.
After all this transformation in infrastructure, Veliaj emphasized that the time has come to introduce fast bus lines. “The proposal today is for us to switch to the Fast Bus Line, which will initially be applied to 3 lines. The proposal that came to us with the support of our friends from KFË and the German GIZ, and with the support of the Albanian Government, is to switch to a system where the bus lane is uninterrupted, so that cars do not enter or pedestrians. The lines that will pass with dedicated fast lanes are: Tirana e Re, Unaza and Kombinati, as we have done in some cases with bicycle lanes”, he said.
According to him, the implementation of such a system would encourage citizens to use better quality public transport. Veliaj brought examples of success, how the new model, which is functional in many world capitals, will be implemented in the Albanian capital. “Today the Bus Rapid Transit system has been implemented by Amsterdam, Chicago, Ottawa, Mexico City, Bogata, Taipei and Tokyo, so it is something that is receiving universal support in most cities, both in Asia and America, as well as in Europe , as well as in some of the largest cities in northern Africa, because it is clearly something more economical, more affordable and more realistic to be implemented in our city as well”, he added.
Fast bus lines will bring a number of other benefits besides speed. “The proposal brings us a reduction in traffic, it brings us less pollution, because the buses do not stop with pedestrians, but they have an express route, it brings us more equality in movement. How does this proposal translate into a concrete investment? We will build 55 kilometers of lanes, so from the 10 kilometers we have today, we will move to 55 kilometers of dedicated BRT lanes. By the end of 2023, we will have the first 10 kilometers and by the end of this 5-year plan, we will have a complete network of 55 kilometers. We want to invest over 50 million euros in the rapid movement of public transport, in these 3 lines, i.e. in these dedicated lanes”, he underlined.
The plan is for the fast buses to be electric, revealed the head of the Municipality. “In all 3 of these corridors, we want to double the speed movement, from 9-9.5 kilometers, which is a modest speed today, to 20 kilometers per hour. Increasing speed will lead to narrowing of time; so if a full cycle of the Ring is done in 54 minutes, the Ring will go in 24 minutes. This means that, since the speed has increased, the time taken to make the complete cycle has decreased, it gives us the opportunity to take the transport capacity from these 9 thousand passengers per hour that we have today, to 23 thousand passengers per hour with the new system that we are proposing. We have also planned the automated placement of vehicles so that we have a security and opportunity to see exactly where each bus is, to digitally signal the station, so that the citizen can also see digitally how long the vehicle is coming”, he explained at the end he.
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