The Small Ring Road: the project and its history
Almost a year has passed since the capital’s Centre began to be “transformed” according to the “Belgian” plan (Studio 51N4E) that Tirana Municipality pledged to implement. But one element of this transformation, the “Small Ring Road”, has turned out to be the weakest part of the project implemented so far.
What was supposed to solve the traffic problem and make work on Skanderbeg Square easier has actually made the situation even more chaotic, because the project is incomplete, and it was known from the outset that it could not be implemented.
Why could the “Small Ring Road” project not be implemented? To begin with, the concept has existed since 1976. The changes architects of that period envisaged for central Tirana were guided by functionality and the opportunities for innovation available at the time.
The documentary “Kryeqyteti ynë” (Our Capital; Central State Film Archive, 1976) shows that Tirana was then envisaged with “essential improvements to the road network”, including the creation of an “Inner Ring” or “Small Ring”.
However, the idea for a ring road that architect Misko describes in “Kryeqyteti ynë” was never developed. Around 30 years later, the concept of a ring road in the centre returned with the so-called “French Plan”. Indeed, its implementation began.
But the final confirmation that a ring road “à la Misko” would never be built came when work on Murat Toptani Street uncovered the remains of Tirana’s old castle.
These archaeological finds definitively changed the street’s eventual use, from a road where bus routes were also expected to run to a pedestrian area. So, with the discovery of these ruins, the “Small Ring Road” project could no longer be implemented.
Traffic on today’s sections
So what Small Ring Road do we have today? Today we have a makeshift ring road. Only one section of the original idea has been built (the section behind Hotel Tirana and Barrikadave Street), and it is promoted as the “Small Ring Road”.
Vehicle traffic has been improvised through Abdi Toptani Street beside Tirana Municipality, rather than the Murat Toptani pedestrian street, funnelling more than three public transport routes and the full intensity of the Centre’s traffic through it.
An image circulated in various media showed the southern section of the “Small Ring Road” including part of Zhan D’Ark Boulevard. Integrating it with the existing ring road effectively eliminates the Small Ring Road as a “concept”, and the city’s ring-road traffic system itself. 