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. The use of 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 delay 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 ticket price for urban public transport, from 30 to 40 lek, in January 2016, the Municipality of Tirana also promised an increase in the quality of service to citizens, tightening the measures. "We will make sure that for every violation there is a fine, up to the removal of the license", - expressed among other things the vice president, Arbjan Mazniku. Following this decision, the Municipality of Tirana has issued a series of orders to guarantee the quality and safety of the urban service in the city.

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

The orders also determine the penalties for operators, from the removal of points to the removal of the license, if they violate the basic conditions of the service such as: failure to respect the route, frequency, failure to sell subscriptions, failure to use the air conditioner; not installing systems GPS on buses, the special systems for people with disabilities (ramps and reserved seats), but which have rarely been applied to the operators of these lines, the most recent case being the one on the Ring line, operated by Ferlut Sh.a.

Who "circulates" Tirana?

 Currently, there are 15 bus lines in Tirana, not included 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 offered urban service on the Ring line.  On September 13, 2021, the municipality of revoked the company's license "after numerous abuses, also denounced by the users of the line", 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. KP, with the tools, which were intended to be used in The Green Line (L16).

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

company Tirana Bus Sh. PK, manages the line from the former train station to TEG; City Trans, that of Kashar; Pomegranate-Trans Sh. KP, Tufina and Kombinat-Kinostudio lines; Diamond Society Sh. KP, Selitë-Allias line; Alba Trans Sh. A., the line of New Tirana and the line of the former Autotractor Factory-Kamza Institute; Tirana Travel Sh. KP, Dinamo-Sharre Uzina line; lines TEG-the train station from Mag Utilities Sh. PK; Tirana Lines Sh. PK, manages the line Institut-former Combine of Autotractors and Laprakë and Gerard Sh. KP, New Maternity Center, while Tirana Urban Trans, that of Porcelain.

company Gerard Sh. P. K., except for the transport line from the maternity center 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 offers urban transport Services, City Trans-A Sh. P.K., which administers the Kashari line.

At the same time, from a simple research of the site OpenProcurement, it turns out that the sole partner of these two companies, through the latter, but also other companies, has benefited from the Municipality of Tirana 14 other tenders, 6 of which have been designated with a red flag by Open Data.

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

Also, according to Mr. In addition, the construction of lanes dedicated to public transport is also necessary, so that this transport is fast and proper. "Municipalities must build the lanes dedicated to public transport and every detail related to public transport infrastructure. For all the needy classes, who do not pay the transport ticket, no compensation has ever been made against the operators". – he explained. He further states that "the requests sent, both before and during the pandemic, that are mainly related to 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 line on a daily basis New Tirana, 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 put on and the invoice or control does not require an account for this part, as they themselves do not have any. They stay at Kastrati station for more than 3 minutes. The bus often moves slowly, even when it has the freeway. As for the air conditioner, they don't open it. Even for the cleanliness part, tickets are often seen on the ground and the air does not circulate properly", she says. This situation, witnessed by AM, is also observed in other, urban lines of 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 it includes Sustainable Urban Mobility Plan of Tirana Municipality, show another frequency of urban service. According to data presented in February 2020 by the Municipality of Tirana, the scheduled service frequency varies from 3 to 15 minutes between lines, although there are no timetables available to check the changes in peak and off-peak times. Now since the buses have been halved, the wait at the station exceeds 30 minutes, but even before the wait varied 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 Domestic Gate about the bus service, which comes to the conclusion that the latter does not have the appropriate standards. Some of the conclusions of the study are: The waiting time for the bus varies according to the lines, ranging from 3.3 minutes to 38.3 minutes; the cleanliness of 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; even when it is turned 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 to implement special measures against Covid-19, drafted by the Ministry of Health. The implementation of these measures led to the need to achieve a agreement between operators and Tirana Municipality, at the core of which was the fact that in case of violation of these protocols, the responsibility would be the individual of the travelers, and not of the operators. The resumption of urban transport was accompanied by the need to fulfill some obligations as an integral part of the protocol against the pandemic Covid-19. However, it is enough to use one of the bus lines to understand that the rules, such as the mandatory use of a mask or social distance, 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 encountered by the citizens of the capital who travel by bus were not enough, in May of this year they were informed of an unannounced decision, that of the suspension of the general subscription until September, in order to conducting a study for improving the service in urban transport. The decision, which was met with protests by the citizens, was withdrawn a month later and from July 1 on the market subscriptions circulate again general. The municipality of Tirana says that it has completed the study, but it has not been made public, until the moment of publication of this article.

Failure to monitor buses through GPS

 In February 2017, the Municipality of Tirana promised to install the system GPS on buses, in order to inform passengers about their location. "The frequency of their 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 the phone through the Tirana Ime application", expressed at the time the mayor, Erion Veliaj.

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 the systems GPS or SIT of the city passenger transport service aims to improve the management capacities of public transport through the determination of service schedules, vehicles in service, speed of movement and other elements, which help the service system. Meanwhile, the same contractual obligations for setting up the system GPS are also translated into the system SIT, a function of which is to inform passengers on the bus and the station about the remaining time until the next stop, as well as for passengers at the station waiting for the bus, the vehicles in the vicinity of the station, the following lines and the real time of each vehicle , through tables LED at stations and inside buses.

Both of these systems, despite the prediction of their establishment for a period of more than 5 years and more than enough time for their implementation, have been neglected by all the current operators in the urban transport system, but also by the Municipality of of Tirana, which together with these two systems has also failed in the implementation of the electronic ticket system. Only in August 2021, Mayor Veliaj admitted that the system GPS will already begin to function in monitoring the operation of the urban transport service, despite the fact that the legal obligations for the municipality and for the operators of urban lines 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 said to Center for Quality Journalism that currently there are no electric buses 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)", - explains the Municipality of Tirana in the answer given on August 13, 2021.

According to the response of the Municipality of Tirana about electric buses, in October 2017, the Municipality of Tirana cooperated with the foreign company Solaris to bring an electric bus to the test. The projects were supposed to start earlier, but due to the pandemic, they have been postponed.

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

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

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

In January 2018, the municipality announced that it would be added to Tirana The Green Liner, which would cross the area from palace with arrows, crossing the boulevard Bajram Curri, until Elbow; back on the road Architect Kasemi, follows on Bardhyl Street and turns right onto the road Monastery Congress; then it's back on the road Imer Ndregjoni in the area of The fireplace.

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 in Albania, in which the latter promised that public transport will was 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 tools that will be used, the Municipality of Tirana has communicated Center for Quality Journalism that the tools to be used are the property of the company that has acquired the right to license, branded tools: Solaris, Male, Volvo, Hess, Evobus, From Hool.

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

It is unclear if The Green Line, which is currently not operational, but whose tools are replacing the firm's tools Ferlut in covering the line of ring, is part of this initiative or not, as long as the terms electric and hybrid have been used continuously and 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 fit today's needs for a clean environment.

The Mayor also e 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 of the line ring, the line buses Go Green were found to be 2007 products (Mercedes Benz) 2009 (Van Hool) 2010 (Hess) and 2013 (Volvo), all buses with almost even more than a decade of work 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 accepted by the drivers of one of these buses, who spoke anonymously about ACQJ: "These buses have closed the cycle there and are then recycled here, so to speak."

A simple search on Internet proves the value of these tools, which can purchased online for the value of a used vehicle. To the author's request for comment on the findings during the examination of these buses in the field 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, buses young people, electric and hybrids of the new line, Go Green, still remain in function of the line of ring as a replacement line for a line whose license was revoked by the Municipality of Tirana, without predicting the effects on urban traffic in the absence of replacement operators.