Tirana Parking in 3 years "occupied" more than 70% of the capital's public parking lots

Author: Brejdon Xhavara

If you have a business meeting, a coffee to drink in the capital, or to make a purchase in the shops, the first thought that comes to your mind is where you should park your car. You are lucky if you manage to find a free public place to park, or you will be forced to pay for a public service in private or paid public parking lots that the Municipality of Tirana has.

The territory of Tirana Municipality is being developed every day, hundreds of square meters are being built in the capital, turning traffic and parking into a nightmare for every driver. According to accumulated statistics, only 1% of cars in Tirana can find a free public parking space.

Tirana is the city with the heaviest traffic in Albania, around 120 thousand vehicles circulate every day. They are in the capital 5385 allocated parking spaces in 3908 paid parking spaces and 1430 free parking spaces. These parking places are managed by Tirana Parking, a company which was opened in November 2015 by the decision of Tirana City Council and is subordinate to the Municipality of Tirana.

Since the first year when the company was founded, the number of free public parking spaces began to decrease every year, because immediately the white visas, which indicated that you could park there for free, were replaced by blue visas, where the drivers of cars had to pay a fee for every hour they stayed there.

Sipas Tirana Municipal Decision no. 49, dated 11.11.2015 (MCD) the company "Tirana Parking" has in its administration 70% of paid public parking spaces, while 30% of parking spaces must be free.

Residential areas and the lack of information for citizens...

In the neighborhoods of the capital, a new sign has already been placed that reads residential area where no one can park who does not have a "stamp" on the windshield of the car.

Residential parking is one of the forms where citizens can park in their neighborhood for free by being equipped with the resident's card, but now even this way has turned into a concern for residents. The fines placed on the windshield of the car became daily for the "5 Maj" neighborhood in the capital, Ali Dedja said that in his palace, the municipal police come 4 times a day and impose fines on the cars parked down there."I've been parking my car next to my building for 5 years, I've been looking at fines on the car for three days, but I can't understand it, I asked the Municipal Police, they told me that it's a residential area and I need to get a resident card". says Dedja, for the Albanian Center for Quality Journalism.

Urban planning expert Gerti Delli tells ACQJ that public parking is one of the problems faced by the residents of many neighborhoods in Tirana, especially in the small ring of Tirana."Parking locations and "signs" have been placed without a real plan for parking in Tirana. Today in the capital, there is no proper plan for transportation in general and parking in particular. By not having a plan, then there will always be problems in the management of this very important sector. Solutions with pilot projects and 4-color maps (based on Tirana parking for residents) have not brought a solution to the problem, but an aggravation of this problem".explains Delli.

The Albanian Center for Quality Journalism asked the Municipality of Tirana for information that public parking lots have already turned into residential parking lots, the Municipality of Tirana, through an official letter, said that they are 5841 parking spaces divided into four areas designated as (ZAP1, ZAP2, ZAP3, ZAP4)

ACQJ through an official letter requested from Tirana Parking that "How should the parking infrastructure in Tirana be so that citizens have the opportunity to park for free?

Tirana Parking shows that: Free parking for citizens on the streets that Tirana Parking administers is intended in two forms:

Free parking after the end of the time slot (08:00-20:00) for all vehicles; Free parking for residents of the areas defined by the Municipal Council Decision. The citizens of Tirana can currently park for free in 4 Free Parking Zones, these zones are defined by the Municipal Decision. As we explained above, parking in these areas is possible by equipping the citizen with a Resident Card.

According to expert Delli, only four areas to park is not a solution"The initiative of free parking for residents is a positive approach, but only 4 spots are not enough and the problem in this sector is solved. Planning based on the population that each neighborhood would need would yield a statistic that would be important for planning parking spaces. The chaos in this sector has brought problems with the "occupation of the car" in public spaces that can be parks, sidewalks or flower beds, he adds.

What is happening with free public parking?

The Albanian Center for Quality Journalism interviewed another urban planning expert Kedis Burrja, he said that the problem with parking started as soon as the construction of the tens of meters high towers started. Along with them, the problem of unanticipated parking spaces in plans and projects was added. "Currently in Tirana the problem of parking is gradually increasing in two areas: the central one of the city (more or less inside the ring) and the one in the peripheral area (areas of expansion of the city beyond the ring). In the central area of ​​the city since the 90s, parking has been a problem more of organization than of quantity of space", says the Man.

With the evolution of the city, constructions and the occupation of public space, Tirana is already overpopulated, the main streets such as "Myslym Shyri", "Boulevardi Zogu i Parë", "Rruga Bardhyl" areas such as "Community of Paris", "Train Station" , "Rruga e Dibra", "Rruga e Kavaja", "Rruga e Durrës", "Mine Peza", etc., the car park has been removed and some of the streets have been turned into bicycle lanes, causing quite a bit of sales by various companies such as taxis or businesses.

The urban planning expert further explains "Many of the old problems escalated to the point that they were lost within the fresh problems that were caused by the accommodation of these gigantic new building structures. Old Services such as the squares of residential blocks and neighborhoods, the possibility of circulation by bicycles, public transport, spaces for emergency Services, parks, flower beds, sidewalks, etc., were gradually faded by the demands of these out-of-scale facilities. Being incompatible with our cities due to history, culture, building materials, terrain and needs, their adaptation shifted the main roads, changed the infrastructure above and below ground, wrinkled the space and transformed its functions which affected since the fall of the well-being of the city's lifestyle to the alienation of local culture, history and lifestyle; the continued mass departures of the population are proof of these phenomena in time".

Tirana Parking, over 318 million lek profits from parking in 2020

Since 2015, when Tirana Parking was established, it has increased its earnings from the payments that citizens have made through a message on the phone divided into three areas (Zone A 100 lek, Zone B 40 lek and Zone C 20 lek).ë Tirana Parking from the first year of work until 2020 there is a doubling of income, while the best period is 2019 where they managed to earn about 469 million ALL.

The Albanian Center for Quality Journalism asked Tirana Parking who, what are the problems and how can the parking issue be resolved?

According to Tirana Parking, the main problem for citizens remains the lack of information on free parking. "There are still many citizens who are not informed in the way the parking service is organized in the city, but also by others who, and why they are aware, do not want to respect the parking rules". The most highlighted and repeated problems by the citizens are: Request for providing an alternative way of paying for the street parking service, the provision of more than one Resident Stamp per family, as according to the institution's internal regulations, it is not allowed to be provided with this Card more than one family member. The request for equipment with the Resident Stamp for business tools, requests and complaints of citizens Tirana Parking tries to analyze and study the policies to improve Services and select the most efficient alternatives, in order to facilitate the possibility of parking in Tirana" , points out Tirana Parking in the response to the Albanian Center for Quality Journalism.

The complaints of the citizens of Tirana are even higher, unplanned parking is found everywhere in Tirana, it is enough to observe the streets of the capital and you will see how white and blue lines have been placed on the main streets, narrowing the carriageway and causing accidents, such is the street "Besim Alla" area of ​​Misto Mames where 3 months ago the situation was this and today the situation is this, endangering the lives of citizens.

Does Tirana have infrastructure for the expansion of parking spaces?

Expert Kedis Burrja finds it difficult to increase parking spaces, in a city that is focusing on the narrowing of public spaces, through the construction of towers: "In this new order of problems dominated by those of ten-story towers, as a solution, the production of other ten-story towers is constantly implemented. It is understandable where this road of progressive accumulation of problems with no solutions ends. On the other hand, another phenomenon occurs in the suburban areas of the city. Parking problems vary greatly from area to area, but there are areas where parking is not a problem at all. This is not due to good solutions but it is due to the development created there in a great or complete lack of public Services in general. Meanwhile, among them there are other newly developed or still developing areas that suffer mainly from the lack of planning".

For expert Gerti Delli, the main problem is the occupation of public spaces for vehicle parking. "By not doing an in-depth analysis of this sector, then the solutions will be with pilot projects that will open even more problems as it happened. The closure of the parking lanes on the main roads has caused the flow to go to the neighborhoods and especially the public spaces and sidewalks have been occupied. If we carefully notice in every neighborhood there are cars on the sidewalk, which has brought big problems for the residents of the neighborhood and beyond".

Expert Delli thinks that the solution should be at the neighborhood level. "Community participation is essential to understand who are the interests of all the actors that are part of the area. Parking has become a stress both for people who have 1 vehicle and especially for the residents of the neighborhoods when they see cars parked everywhere in public spaces. he points out.

The buildings built in the time of communism do not have underground parking and as such, the entire street "Hoxha Tahsim" since 2016 has been a street where you can park on the right hand side, allowing other cars to avoid being blocked. the street, while today you can no longer park on this street, and the side where the cars used to park has already turned into a bicycle track, no longer allowing cars to stop to rest.

For the citizens who live in the "New Market" area, parking is a nightmare since the buildings they live in have no parking space. Luan Shima, an early resident of the New Market, points out that the buildings built here date back to 1970 and are not built with underground parking. "We have 2 cars in the family, when my son comes home from work, he needs 30 minutes to look for a parking space in the nearby neighborhoods because there is no space in our building, while I move the car once a week because I am afraid that they can take my place if I move it every day", he says.

Urbanist Burrja explains that: "public parking is a public service. As such, it is expensive and the costs together with its distribution are managed in a joint manner, in order to provide it to the citizens in the most fair way, without distinctions of suburbs or centers, wealth or rank, adapting to the needs of time and lifestyle for parking service. Private parking, on the other hand, is also a public service, but it is always profiled to the needs and possibilities of the owner who offers it and to the customers. The better the planning, design, technology and materials of the public parking infrastructure, the higher the quality of the service will be."

He thinks that the parking management by Tirana Municipality has failed. "In the specific case of Tirana, all four of these characteristics leave much to be desired. The reasons are not related to capacities and opportunities, but related to management directions. The concrete result of today's management is the daily experience of various problems with parking, which from experience resemble more and more torture".

The "fat" fines of the Municipal Police, in 2018 over 100 million in revenue...

Parking in Tirana also brings other problems, very frequent is the administrative measures that the Municipal Police imposes when the vehicle is parked on the street against the traffic sign. According to the official data made available by the Municipality of Tirana, the ACQJ, the Police The municipality has managed to collect a high figure of income from 2017-2020 from fines for drivers. The golden year for the Municipal Police is the year 2018, where it managed to collect from "fines" more than 100 million Lek and the lowest year is 2017 with about 53 million Lek.

The revenues collected from public parking spaces with lek and administrative measures go to the budget of the Municipality of Tirana under a single motto "This payment goes to the greening of the city". but there are many accusations raised by environmentalists about the greening of the city, even in the recent developments of the territory, the Municipality of Tirana has paved the way for the construction of high-rise buildings with many floors, reducing the green space even more.

Since Erion Veliaj took the leadership of the city, one of the promises was the organization of public space for parking, with the opening of the terminals for the South and North buses, this was the last investment by the Municipality of Tirana. Since 2015 until now today the municipality has established bicycle lanes as a better way to protect the environment from the fumes released by cars and on the other hand has narrowed the space of the main roads in Tirana, not allowing any infrastructural development opportunities to park.

The man shows that the problems that must be solved in order to enjoy the public parking service have a managerial and political character, he further says that:Their technical part is easily repairable if these first two are fixed. A key aspect that connects the two I think has to do with using the wrong reference examples for development. Often, taking advantage of the inferiority complex cultivated for decades in our people, certain models are even advertised for a new required development with the obvious justification that they are the most advanced practices in the world. Maybe somewhere in the world they can really be used and work, but what is overlooked in this approach are two main things: 1) the conditions in which the practices take place and 2) the purpose for which the development is requested.

Although the problems are visible to the eyes of the citizens in Tirana, the experts proved the parking problems in Tirana for several years, while the Municipality of Tirana and Tirana Parking stated that "there are still many citizens who are not informed about how the parking service is organized in the city, but also from others who, and why they are aware, do not want to respect the parking rules". ACQJ's observation highlighted that Tirana Parking during 3 years "possessed" more than 70% of public parking lots and that 1430 free public spaces were replaced by "Residential Parking" leaving citizens with no choice by spending more money on parking and fines.