Author: Denis Tahiri
On average, around 120 vehicles circulate in Tirana every day. Known as the city with the heaviest traffic in the country, Tirana is also an area where drivers are not guaranteed free public parking. Despite the great intensity of vehicles coming from other cities, there are only 1430 free parking spaces in the capital. So only about 1 percent of cars in circulation can be provided with a free parking space. Everyone else has to spend time, money and nerves until they find a parking space for the vehicle.
But how much stress it brings and how much it costs for the pockets of the residents of the capital to park a vehicle, explains Hasan Stafa, who is the director of the Albanian Consumer Complaints Office and which protects the interests of citizens.
"The fines are alarming and abusive. Not only are there not enough places, but even when they are found under the apartment, citizens are fined. We have had many complaints from all 11 units in Tirana. The most complaints are about parking in the neighborhood, especially from double parking that is done in one place or another. Many have been forced to use paid parking, but how much can an Albanian family afford to pay for parking every day?" asks Stafa, appearing concerned about the burden on citizens' pockets.
But what is emphasized in the concern of the Albanian consumer complaints office is directly related not only to the numerous fines, but also to the chaos that is created further by double parking. " Since there is no parking space, in many cases it is parked twice without forgetting the lack of signage. This brings another difficulty, the blocking of the passage for emergency cases of ambulances and fire engines." explains Staff
For Alma, who lives near the "Red School", not providing a parking space is a daily refrain, turned into a double nightmare. For every day when she leaves for work by car and when she returns home, Alma is subjected to the same challenge. Not to mention, according to her, the problems with the task in cases where she has to be late, while finding a parking space is a difficulty in itself.
"Parking is our daily problem, even when we go to work and when we come back from work, we think about where we will leave the car. Because we never find a place in front of our apartment. There are some bars where customers occupy all the parking spaces" says the 49-year-old who adds that "even though I have a resident card, I have no benefits as there are no parking spaces "
Resident card
But at the doors of the complaints office, there is also a knock to raise concern about resident cards, which they consider powerless to secure parking spaces in the residential area.
"The resident card is not working. Conflicts between citizens have been caused because the card does not specify a number of parking spaces for a resident and often these spaces are very few, not meeting the citizens' demand" adds Hasan Stafa
On the other hand, an official of the Traffic Police, in anonymity, told the Albanian Center for Quality Journalism, that in the last two years, the capital has practically turned into an urban area without parking.
" The whole of Tirana is a problem for parking, especially in the interior. The small ring is critical for parking, the boulevards as well, Kavaja street, Durrës street. This situation has worsened in the last two years, and especially during this year even more. Traffic has increased, but so have citizens' fines for wrong parking. The situation is aggravated even more by bicycle riders, as the parking spaces have been removed and turned into lanes".
With a mission to park
If you look at the map of the capital, it is easy to see that Tirana is owned by Tirana Parking, to which bills from 20 allek to 100 allek per hour are paid according to the areas. Created in 2015, the company that is subordinate to the capital's municipality started the occupation of parking lots first by taking the main squares, then the streets and finally the residents' areas.
In other words, anyone who parks in four underground squares near Skënderbej Square, new Boulevard, at the former 7 Dwarfs and Italia Square, must pay. The wallet must also be opened by the citizen who parks the car in six open parking lots located near the Selman Stermani stadium, Asllan Rusi, in the Student City, near the Lake Dam and near Infosoft. Even in the capital's 60 road junctions divided by parking zones, with payment made through a phone message, it costs 100 ALL in zone A, 40 ALL in zone B and 20 ALL per hour in zone C.
But all these streets and squares in total contain 12,543 vehicle parking spaces where less than half of them with a figure of 5841 are parking spaces for residents, who according to the card must park in free parking spaces. Everyone else has to pay, especially those who are in a hurry and ask for parking on the street, where there are 3917 parking spaces, as well as 971 places in underground parking lots and 384 open parking lots.
For anyone who is a resident of Tirana or comes from outside the city and who does not want to pay, the capital offers free capacity for only 1430 drivers. Therefore, paid parking to avoid fines is the only salvation for drivers who have turned their car parking into an impossible mission.
The most recent official data of the municipality of Tirana regarding the population belong to 2018. Declared as residents of Tirana 842,019 inhabitants. On the other hand, the vehicles they have in use in this period number 158,234. This figure means that there are almost 100 times more vehicles circulating than the capacity of free or paid parking lots.
Municipal Treasury, from fines and parking
And when the largest city in the country suffers from the influx of cars on the one hand and the pronounced lack of parking, the income that is collected from paid parking has turned into the golden egg that is deposited in the budget of the Municipality.
Year after year, the income only increases from this item, as well as from the collection of signed fines for wrong parking.
In 2017, the Municipality of Tirana benefited from the fines for wrong parking of 53,218,000 ALL, which means that the local government budget has increased by 145,802.74 ALL per day. While in 2018, the highest figure collected by the municipality of Tirana was also recorded, of 1 billion old lek, more precisely, 102,283,000, or an average of 280,227.40 every day of the year. Also during 2019, these revenues were an important item in the municipality's budget, where a total of 88,542,000 Lek were benefited, which translates for 2019 into a daily average of 242,580.82 Lek. Profits are unstoppable even during the restriction of movements during the pandemic and the introduction of the country into quarantine during the two months of isolation from covid 19. According to the data officially available to the Albanian Center for Quality Journalism, until October 31, 2020, the municipality of capital has benefited an amount of 67,986,000 ALL, which translates into a daily average of 222,904.92 ALL.
Profitable and with a great impact on the budget of the Municipality of Tirana, the revenues from paid parking in the capital, whether these are squares or paid public parking on the side of the road, turn out to be. In 2017, this item in the municipality's budget was 335,845,126 Lek, where an average of 920,123.63 Lek was collected per day. This figure increases in 2018, where in total from paid parking, the Municipality of Tirana would collect an amount of 454,788,832 Lek, and on average for one day it collected a total of 1,245,996.8 Lek. Even in 2019, these revenues have grown, where 469,401,688 Lek were collected, i.e. an average daily amount of 1,286,032 Lek. Meanwhile, from January 1, 2020 to October 31, the Municipality of Tirana collected a total of 318,325,387 ALL, which translates into an average amount per day of 1,043,690 ALL.
School without parking, thousands of euros a garage
"One parking space for each class” is emphasized in the regulation of the General Local Plan of the Municipality of Tirana approved in 2017. But on the ground, the truth is quite different. Citizens suffer from the lack of parking spaces and, in addition, fines are imposed on them.
The "Kosova" school, with an address on Elbasani street and with a high number of students, is one of the recently reconstructed educational institutions in the capital. But after an observation carried out around this school, there is a lack of even a dedicated parking space for it. Before such neglect, expectant parents solve the problem in random ways. Either stalling in front of the main entrance or parking haphazardly, mostly in double spaces. But this solution causes at least heavy traffic that often ends with conflicts.
The same chaotic panorama is presented in front of the "Edi Durham" school and in the vast majority of schools.
Gerta, a young mother, faces this stress every morning and every lunch when she runs to take her son to school 'Kosova'.
"I often leave the car on the side of the road with the ignition on. I run to deliver my son to the teacher who usually waits for him at the door. I know that this action leads to a traffic jam, but I have no other choice." the new one is justified.
"Even when I go to work later, the same situation. There have been cases where I had to pay three or four times the hourly parking fee on Kavaja Street in one day until I found a free parking spot. I also often use private parking lots, they are cheaper since it is enough to pay 200 lek and the parking lasts all day. But even for private parkings it has become difficult, or they are full and you have to trust the keys to the guards"
Who else benefits?
In this mess, stress and anxiety for a parking space, not everyone is lost. For builders, the flow of cars on one side and the lack of parking is an excellent and not to be missed moment to do business. A simple Google search for buying and selling garages in Tirana is enough to understand how the price paradoxically approaches the value of an apartment. From internet searches, it turns out that the most expensive garage is sold for 35 euros in the New Tirana area, 20 euros in the Ali Demi area, and the most occasional one is bought for 5500 euros in suburban areas. This is of course also due to the positioning of the buildings, where the closer you are to the center, the more expensive a parking space is, as well as due to the space.
' Some look for garages for the safety of their vehicle, but most are drivers who are tired from the lack of a parking space. explains Agron T., who is employed as an administrator in a construction company. 'The increase in the prices of garages was noticeable these five years, as the first floors are used for business, but that automatically means less parking spaces for residents. So I have noticed that citizens who order houses, in areas such as near the Kosovar street, near New Tirana, near the 21st of December or the former bus park and others, they also negotiate for the prices of garages that vary with salty prices" explains the administrator according to which this situation is related not only to the high demand for purchases in Tirana, but also to the lack of parking spaces.
