Public transport in Tirana amid countless problems and the attempt to solve them through the import of used, hybrid buses

Author: Klivia Kafexhiu

In these November days with unusual temperatures, and overcrowding in a city like Tirana, which is reaching nearly 1 million inhabitants, urban movement has become a challenge. Using public urban transport is a forced choice every day for an average of 200,000 citizens. This challenge has been further aggravated recently, not only by the delays and overcrowding of the service due to the pandemic and various justifications issued by the operators of these lines, but also by the threat of halving the service , announced on October 18, 2021, by the Public Transport Union, a serious threat to this system that has already found a temporary solution.

From the reflection of the data of the Municipality of Tirana, it is stated that, among the people who use public transport, 64.7% of them travel with a ticket and a smaller part use season tickets, booklets or other documents that are recognized by the authorities.

Information provided by the OpenData portal of the Municipality of Tirana

With the increase in the price of a ticket for urban public transport, from 30 to 40 lekë, in January 2016, the Municipality of Tirana also promised to increase the quality of service to citizens, by tightening measures. “We will ensure that for every violation there is a fine, up to the revocation of the license”, – said, among other things , the Deputy Mayor, Arbjan Mazniku. Following this decision, the Municipality of Tirana has also issued a series of orders, to guarantee the quality and safety of urban service in the city.

Order No. 27458, dated 13.09.2016, of the Municipality of Tirana on “Monitoring, inspection, reporting and performance evaluation in the public urban passenger transport service and the implementation of measures for violations of the urban transport service contract” , supplemented by the relevant orders for each urban line, clearly defines the obligations of contractors who provide urban transport Services in the capital, starting from the movement schedules, to their frequency, itineraries or stations. The same order charges the Directorate of Road Traffic Transport, the Registration and Licensing Center, the Consumer Protection Agency and the Municipal Police with its implementation.

The orders also determine penalties for operators, from the removal of points to the revocation of the license, if they violate basic service conditions such as: failure to respect the itinerary, frequency, failure to respect ticket sales, failure to use air conditioning; failure to install GPS systems on buses, special systems for people with disabilities (ramps and reserved seats), but which have rarely been applied to operators of these lines, the most recent case being the one on the Ring Line, operated by the company Ferlut Sh.a.

Who "circulates" Tirana?

Currently, there are 15 bus lines in Tirana, not including the Green Line , which, even after the conclusion of the contract between the Municipality of Tirana and the operator, was never made available to the public. These lines are operated by 11 companies. Ferlut Sh. A., was the operator that provided urban service on the Ring Road line. On September 13, 2021, the municipality revoked the company's license "after numerous abuses, also denounced by the line's users," as explained by the mayor, Erion Veliaj.

With the cancellation of this license, this urban line is temporarily being covered by the company Gerard-A Sh. PK, with the vehicles that were intended for use on the Green Line (L16).

But what are the companies that operate in the urban market of Tirana?

The Tirana Bus Company Sh. PK, manages the line from the former train station in TEG ; City Trans , that of Kashari; Shega-Trans Sh. PK, the Tufina and Kombinat-Kinostudio lines; Diamond Society Sh. PK, the Selitë-Allias line; Alba Trans Sh. A., the New Tirana line and the former Autotraktorëve-Instituti i Kamza line; Tirana Travel Sh. PK, the Dinamo-Sharrë line; TEG line -train station from Mag Utilities Sh. P. K; Tirana Lines Sh. PK, manages the Institute-former Autotraktorëve and Laprakë and Gerard Sh. PK, the New Maternity Center line, while Tirana Urban Trans , that of Porcelan.

The company Gerard Sh. P. K., in addition to the transport line from the maternity hospital to the center and Student City - Jordan Misja , also indirectly manages the Kashari line, as long as the sole partner of Gerard-A Sh. PK is also the sole partner in the other company, which provides urban transport Services, City Trans-A Sh. P. K. , which manages the Kashari line.

At the same time, from a simple research of the OpenProcurement website , it appears that the sole partner of these two companies, through the latter, but also other companies, has benefited from 14 other tenders from the Municipality of Tirana, 6 of which were red-flagged by Open Data.

The centralization of urban transport Services in the hands of a few operators, with 4 lines out of 15 now in the hands of one de facto operator, could lead to a decrease in the quality of service and disrespect for citizens' rights. However, expert Rixhin Qosja believes that everything depends on the opportunities and conditions offered by the operators and in the situation created by COVID-19 and the hydrocarbon crisis, the demands expressed by companies operating in public transport should be accepted, in order to increase the quality of service to passengers. Recently, associations have requested the reduction of VAT from 20% to 6%, as well as the abolition of excise duty on oil and a series of other requests, requests that were accepted by the Municipality of Tirana on October 25, 2021.

Also, according to Mr. Qosja, the construction of lanes dedicated to public transport is necessary, so that this transport is fast and proper. "City municipalities must build lanes dedicated to public transport and every detail related to public transport infrastructure. For all the needy groups, who do not pay the transport ticket, no compensation has ever been made to the operators", - he explained. He further states that "the requests sent, both before and during the pandemic, which mainly relate to the financial effects, need intervention. These requests have been sent to the central government, as it is competent to fulfill them".

The bus is gone... Urban lines, without fixed schedules and between long waits

M., uses the New Tirana line on a daily basis to go to work. She says that unlike years ago, when she waited 7-10 minutes at the station, now the frequency of buses exceeds 20 minutes. “Now that we are in a pandemic situation, masks are not worn and the ticket office or the control does not ask for an account for this part, since they themselves do not have one. At the Kastrati station, they wait more than 3 minutes. The bus often moves slowly, even when the road is free. As for the air conditioner, they do not turn it on. Also in terms of cleanliness, tickets are often seen on the ground and the air does not circulate properly ,” she says. This situation witnessed by AM is also observed on other urban lines in the city.

Chapter V of the municipality's regulation for monitoring the quality of the public transport service, for these violations listed by this citizen, provides from a fine to the removal of the license, but until today there have been few cases when the Municipality of Tirana has undertaken campaigns for the implementation of these rules, with urban users as victims of these violations.

The data included in the Sustainable Urban Mobility Plan of the Municipality of Tirana show another frequency of urban service. According to data presented in February 2020 by the Municipality of Tirana, the planned frequency of service varies from 3 to 15 minutes between lines, although there are no timetables available to control for changes in peak and off-peak times. Now that buses have been halved, the wait at the station exceeds 30 minutes, but even before the wait ranged from 10-20 minutes.

This study of the Municipality reveals and tacitly accepts another violation of the companies that provide the urban service, that of the lack of security cameras, a contractual obligation, foreseen in all the contracts concluded by the Municipality of Tirana with the various operators in city. Out of 411 buses circulating in the capital, according to the report itself, only 62 buses are equipped with security cameras.

These findings are further reinforced by a study conducted by Porta Vendore on bus service, which concludes that the latter does not have the appropriate standards. Some of the conclusions of the study are: Waiting time for the bus varies according to the lines, ranging from 3.3 minutes to 38.3 minutes; the cleanliness of the buses in general is 2.4, i.e. less than the middle of the scale; in 58% of cases the air conditioner does not turn on; and even when it does turn on, in 8% of cases it does not work.

Covid-19, social distance and experiments in service

The resumption of urban transport began after 115 days of closure, on July 6, 2020. With this resumption, the need was created to implement special measures against Covid-19 , drafted by the Ministry of Health. The implementation of these measures led to the need to reach an agreement between operators and the Municipality of Tirana , the essence of which was the fact that in case of violation of these protocols, the responsibility would be individual passengers, and not operators. The resumption of urban transport was accompanied by the need to fulfill certain obligations as an integral part of the protocol against the Covid-19 pandemic . However, it is enough to use one of the bus lines to understand that the rules, such as the mandatory use of masks or social distancing, are not respected even though these rules are still in force.

Another problematic issue, noticed by ACQJ during the use of urban buses for the purpose of writing this article, is the ambient temperature in the buses during the summer months. In the orders of the Municipality of Tirana, a series of very little implemented rules are defined, such as the standard temperature inside the vehicles between 15-22 degrees Celsius, but which in reality remains a rule in its entirety not implemented by the majority of operators, as long as the majority of urban transport vehicles are unconditioned or rarely turn it on. This situation becomes even more difficult in the summer months, where in a pandemic state, the overflowing of urban areas in extremely high temperatures turns into a danger for users.

As if all the difficulties faced by the capital's bus users were not enough, in May of this year they were informed of an unannounced decision to suspend the general season ticket until September, in order to conduct a study to improve the service in urban transport. The decision, which was met with protests by citizens, was withdrawn a month later and as of July 1, general season tickets are circulating on the market again . The Municipality of Tirana says that it has completed the study, but it has not been made public, as of the time of publication of this article.

Failure to monitor buses through GPS

In February 2017, the Municipality of Tirana promised to install a GPS system on buses, with the aim of informing passengers of their location. “ Their frequency of circulation will be monitored with GPS and citizens will be informed electronically about the location of the bus and its schedules, not only at the stations, but also from their phones through the Tirana Ime application , ” said the mayor, Erion Veliaj, at the time.

The establishment of such a system is also foreseen in the decisions of the Municipal Council, the orders of the municipality on the monitoring, inspection, reporting and evaluation of the performance in the public transport service of the city of passengers, as well as the TIP contracts in use by the Municipality of Tirana for issuing licenses for the development of this activity by various service providers.

Article 8 of these contracts provides that the use of GPS or SIT systems for urban passenger transport Services aims to improve the management capacities of public transport by determining service schedules, vehicles in service, speed of movement and other elements that assist in the service system. Meanwhile, the same contractual obligations for the establishment of the GPS system are also translated into the SIT system , a function of which is to inform passengers on the bus and at the station about the remaining time until the next stop, as well as for passengers at the station waiting for the urban bus, vehicles near the station, subsequent lines and the real time of each vehicle, through LED signs at the stations and inside the buses.

Both of these systems, despite the forecast of their establishment for a period of more than 5 years and more than sufficient time for their implementation, have been neglected by all current operators in the urban transport system, but also by the Municipality of Tirana itself, which together with these two systems has also failed to implement the electronic ticketing system. Only in August 2021, Mayor Veliaj admitted that the GPS system will now begin to function in monitoring the functioning of the urban transport service, despite the fact that the legal obligations for the municipality and for the urban line operators have been in force for more than half a decade.

Despite the promise of 2017, no electric buses in Tirana

In 2017, the mayor, Erion Veliaj, proposed an even more ambitious project, that of electric buses. On October 26, 2017, the first electric bus was tested in Tirana, where the mayor of Tirana said that a public transport company would be created, if there were no answers from private operators. On May 9, 2019, after a series of promises to reduce pollution, Veliaj said that the ambition of the second mandate had the main focus on electric transport and 5 months later, he declared that the Municipality of Tirana was waiting for electric buses.

But where are the electric buses?

Through an official response, the Municipality of Tirana told the Center for Quality Journalism that there are currently no electric buses operating in Tirana. “At the moment, the city’s public transport operators do not have 100% electric vehicles (buses) in their fleet. Currently, line number 16, the Green Line, is the only line in the city’s public transport that has a hybrid fleet (22 hybrid vehicles) ,” the Municipality of Tirana explained in the response given on August 13, 2021.

According to the response of the Municipality of Tirana regarding electric buses, in October 2017, the Municipality of Tirana collaborated with the foreign company Solaris to bring an electric bus for testing. The projects were supposed to start earlier, but due to the pandemic, they were postponed.

Germany gave 50 million euros for green transport in Tirana, but...

The Municipality of Tirana, in its Sustainable Urban Mobility Plan in 2017, launched an initiative called the Green Line to reduce emissions from public transport vehicles.

"In order to allow the transition to electric vehicles for the entire bus fleet, several studies and assessments are being carried out. One of them consists of testing a bus, the Solaris Urbino, along the circular public transport line ," the document states.

In January 2018, the municipality announced that the Green Line would be added to Tirana , which would run from the palace with arrows , passing through Bajram Curri Boulevard , to Brryli ; it turns onto Arkitekt Kasemi Street , continues onto Bardhyl Street and turns right onto Kongresi i Manastirit Street ; then turns onto Imer Ndregjoni Street in the Oxhak area.

The Municipal Council made the decision to add the line on January 31, 2018. This decision was echoed even more widely by the mayor at the conference Territorial Cooperation, a new perspective for promoting integration , with the presence of the Ambassador of the EU Delegation to Albania, in which the latter promised that public transport would be electrified within the year.

But, in fact, the winning company to provide this service was announced two years later , on July 3, 2020. Asked about the model and operation of this line, as well as the vehicles that will be used, the Municipality of Tirana has communicated to the Center for Quality Journalism that the vehicles that will be used are the property of the company that has acquired the right to license, vehicles of the following brands: Solaris , Man , Volvo , Hess , Evobus , Van Hool.

On May 6 of this year, the German embassy in Tirana announced the launch of the Ecological Transport in Tirana project ; a project financed by the German government with 50 million euros through KfW and a loan to the Municipality of Tirana, which, according to the report presented to parliament together with the law approving this agreement, is expected to have a direct impact on improving the living standards and mobility of passengers using public/urban transport in the territory of the Municipality of Tirana.

It is unclear whether the Green Line , which is currently not operational but whose vehicles are replacing the Ferlut vehicles on the Ring Road , is part of this initiative or not, as the terms electric and hybrid have been used interchangeably by the municipality. The only information available to the public is the presentation of this line and its vehicles as a green alternative to public transport with new buses that adapt to today's needs for a clean environment.

The Mayor also justified the delay in introducing this line with old technology, which made it impossible for electric and hybrid buses to be efficient, but with the introduction of new technologies this obstacle has been overcome.

But the reality is different. Monitored in their operation as replacement buses for the Ring Road, the Go Green buses were found to be manufactured in 2007 ( Mercedes Benz ), 2009 ( Van Hool ), 2010 ( Hess ) and 2013 ( Volvo ), all buses with almost more than a decade of operation in the respective countries from which they were imported, such as The Hague in the Netherlands, Hamburg in Germany and Lier in Belgium. This was also admitted by the drivers of one of these buses, who spoke to ACQJ on condition of anonymity : “These buses have closed the cycle there and are then recycled here, so to speak.”

A simple internet search proves the value of these vehicles, which can be purchased online for the value of a used vehicle. To the author's request for comment on the findings during the field examination of these buses and the municipality's promises for efficient and green buses, the Press Office of the Municipality of Tirana responded with silence, but suggested forwarding a request for information to this institution.

Currently, the new , electric and hybrid buses of the new line, Go Green , still remain in operation on the Ring Road as a replacement line for a line whose license was revoked by the Municipality of Tirana, without foreseeing the effects on urban traffic in the absence of replacement operators.