Transport in Albania
These upgrades have played a key role in supporting Albania's economy, which in the past decade has come to rely heavily on the construction industry.
Since antiquity, the area of modern Albania served as a crossroad of important caravan routes such as the Roman Via Egnatia linking the Adriatic with Byzantium (later Constantinople).
The Italian fascist regime of Mussolini carried out a project of road constructions in Albania in the 1930s, yet auto-mobility was limited at the time.
[3] By 1987, 677 km of railway were constructed in total linking the main urban and industrial centers for the first time since the end of World War II.
Central government funding of local road maintenance effectively ended in 1991, and the breakdown of repair vehicles because of a lack of spare parts threatened to close access to some remote areas.
A group of Greek construction companies signed a protocol with the Albanian government in July 1990 to build a 200 kilometer road across the southern part of the country, extending from the Albanian-Greek border to Durrës.
Albanian entrepreneurs also imported used Greek buses and started carrying passengers on intercity routes that did not exist or had been poorly serviced during the communist era.
In particular, Mercedes-Benz vehicles are widely preferred not only for their status symbol, but also for their durability on rural roads where half of the population resides, and the cheap price for buying used ones.
[5] These are mostly 1990s and early 2000s diesel cars,[6] while it is widely believed that the fuel used in Albania contains larger amounts of sulfur and lead than in the European Union.
Despite the considerable modernization of the airport, prices are among the highest in Europe because of the monopoly over Albanian airspace, and limited carrier choices.
As a result, low-cost carriers are discouraged from entering the Albanian market, while neighboring countries offer much lower prices from their primary and secondary airports.
Most rural segments continue to remain in bad conditions as their reconstruction has only begun in the late 2000s by the Albanian Development Fund.
The realisation of the Adriatic–Ionian Corridor, that is expected to connect all the region from the northwest to the southwest of the Balkan Peninsula, is considered one of the most important infrastructure projects of Albania.
TAP's route through Albania is approximately 215 kilometres onshore and 37 km offshore in the Albanian section of the Adriatic Sea.
It starts at Bilisht Qendër in the Korça region at the Albanian border with Greece, and arrives at the Adriatic coast 17 km north-west of Fier, 400 metres inland from the shoreline.
[23] Public transport in Albania is mainly characterized by the use of furgons, the equivalent of minibuses, vans or shuttles identifiable by yellow plates.
Albanian drivers are prone to using visual and acoustic aids regularly such as honking, headlight flashing, or high beams at night.
As vehicles more than doubled in recent years, traffic fatalities have increased especially in a country where private car ownership was banned until the early 1990s.
Some experts also attribute the increase to the above road structural problems, lack of buckling up, the use of alcohol, excessive speed, and unaccustomed drivers such as expats returning home.
In an effort to curb such a phenomenon, mobile police patrols have been deployed, road signage improved, and speed radars installed on major roadways and city intersections.
