The debate over motorway spending
Various online media reported today – 9 February – with video footage, on the uprooting of palm trees along the Tirana–Durrës motorway. The reports were shallow, mostly just two or three lines. The emphasis was on the “palm trees” and the cost of planting them 3 years ago, with “600 thousand euros” cited as the figure.
But the real emphasis, and the attention of the public, should have been on the total money this road, just 45 kilometres long, has swallowed and will continue to swallow, rather than on the “palm trees”.
The Tirana–Durrës motorway can be called the motorway of millions “without hesitation”. Staggering sums were spent to build it in the early 2000s, and even more extraordinary sums to maintain it.
“The motorway of millions” also fits nicely because even banks’ armoured vans are being robbed on this road!
(*The motorway connects the capital with the airport).
The roadworks and widening project
To begin with, it is worth recalling that the latest works “with palm trees” were carried out before Pope Francis’s visit in 2014. In fact, they were confined to the Shqiponja Square–Qafë Kashari section, rather than the entire motorway.
In 2015, at the height of the debate over the maintenance “concession” for the “Nation’s Road”, a news report circulated that a feasibility study was being carried out for the Tirana–Durrës motorway, for a similar intervention to that on the Nation’s Road.
Not long afterwards, in mid-2016, the media reported that the government already had a project ready for another intervention on the motorway. The “advertising” for this project came with the “promise” of a speed limit of up to 140 km/h, at a time when most complaints about the latest works concerned precisely the “new” speed limit, set at 70–90 km/h.
The project, reported by Panorama in September 2016, says it will widen the motorway to 35 metres and bring it “within European standards”. A real “A1 expressway”!
But as work gets under way, with people preoccupied by the “uprooting of the palm trees”, the figure mentioned as the cost of this “new” project is 120 million euros.
Three lots: Kamëz Overpass–Vora; Vora–Sukth; Sukth–Durrës. Work is to take place for 8 hours a day, only 5 days a week. In short?! A nightmare of a building site for anyone travelling that way during this period.
A period whose duration nobody knows!
Personally, I cannot remember the last summer when I took the motorway to Durrës and there were no roadworks…
Meanwhile, the history of roadworks across Albania has, “honestly”, left us impressed and optimistic!
To Morina? A road that has never been fully finished! Now a private operator will finish it for us, and we will pay out of our own pockets every time we use it.
To Elbasan? A road that collapsed along the way, and nobody knows when it will be finished! It needs the “help” of a private operator, and once again money from our pockets!
To Dibra? A road they say will be built, but nobody knows when. Perhaps “when the Arbërs come back to life”.
And now to Durrës? A road that has swallowed and will swallow millions… so why not call it “The motorway of millions”?!