In a country that has many other problems, parking issues are low on the priority list in the public discourse. However, the relationship Tirana residents have with parking is a good example of many of the things the country needs to fix if it wants to join the family of modern European nations.
As anyone who lives in this city can testify, Tirana has a major parking problem, particularly in the city center. That parking problem, combined with the city’s infrastructure and population density has made Tirana a nightmare for pedestrians and drivers alike.
The problem has its roots in the lack of planning during the construction boom in the past two decades as well as low standards that place greed and expedience ahead of providing quality of life.
The typical chaotic development of post-communist Albania, everybody planned to build as many residential and office units they could, without thinking about accommodating the future residents’ walking, parking and traffic needs. As a result, today the number of vehicles that people have far outstrips the public and private spaces available to park.
The other major problem is Albanians’ general disregard for parking and driving rules under the excuse that the city is a mess and thus the rules that are on the books don’t apply.
Walk in many of the narrow streets of downtown Tirana and you will find pedestrians walking in the middle of the street, because sidewalks have been taken over by parked vehicles.
In an afford to make streets wider, city planners have also made sidewalks in many parts of the city so narrow, it makes it impossible to easily navigate on them — particularly since trees, electric poles, trash bins and the randomly illegally parked vehicle all have to share the same one-meter space with the pedestrians. (See photo above for a typical secondary street sidewalk in Tirana).
The situation can be fixed with certain measures.
First, a city like Tirana needs several above and below ground structures dedicated solely to parking. There have been grandiose plans to build some these structures, but they have never materialized for various reasons. Increasing public parking in downtown Tirana should be a priority, sending vehicles away from streets and sidewalks and into dedicated structures.
Second, all new buildings must be forces to have underground parking and areas where this parking has been used for things such as storage should be returned to their original purpose.
Another part of the solution is to make owning, using and parking a vehicle much more expensive. Yes, people don’t like this idea, but at the end of the day has been the solution used by many large cities to curb traffic congestion and the number of cars in circulation.
Parking fines should also be increased several fold and towing be made faster and more efficient. Only tough enforcement can lead to cultural change. (The ban on smoking in public shows it can work if authorities want to enforce the rules).
The reason parking has been in the news this week is the uproar over the proposed system would allow for the city administration to introduce metered parking in many new areas of Tirana.
The uproar is not solely about the increased costs, but also about what people perceived as foggy business private partnership wanting to create a monopoly for the next 35 years with little political opposition on either side of the spectrum.
Now that that proposal has been shelved, the focus should shift to creating strategies that don’t look solely at extracting revenue, but making the city more livable for all.
