Durres-Kukes concessionaire to be decided next autumn

TIRANA, May 15 – This will be the last season drivers in the Durres-Kukes highway will travel for free. After five international companies were pre-qualified to maintain the Milot-Morine segment earlier this year, the Transport Ministry says the tender to select the winner will be held next October and the toll system start being applied from January 2013, making it Albania’s first toll road.
“We have given these prequalified companies four months to make field inspections, assess the road’s needs to add some junctions, to build a small tunnel along with a main bridge across the lake at the entry of Kukes,” says deputy Transport Minister Ernest Noka.
The winning bidder, which will be responsible for the maintenance and operation of the highway for 35 years, will have to invest Euro 80 million. Users of the Thirre tunnel are expected to pay 5 Euros for personal cars while trucks will pay double.
Partly operational since June 2009, the Durres-Kukes highway and its 5.5 km twin-bore Thirre tunnel is estimated to cost government around 4 million euros annually.
The concession covers a 118 km segment from Milot to Morine, the major part of the Durres-Kukes nicknamed the ‘Highway of Nation’ including the 5.5 km Rreshen- Kalimash tunnel.
Prime Minister Sali Berisha has earlier announced that big companies will be hired to maintain major roads such as the Rreshen-Kalimash highway, admitting that the General Road Directorate lacks both human and material capacities to manage and maintain them. ”
The winning bidder will also operate and maintain the Thirra tunnel, an open tolling system,
In addition to operation and maintainace requirements, the Concessionaire will also be obliged to undertake rehabilitation and expansion works such as the construction of the toll plaza for an open tolling system, installation of lighting at all interchanges, construction of the Kalimash interchange.
Linking Milot, approximately 60km northeast of the Adriatic port of Durres, with Morine at the Kosovo border, the route forms the central section of the wider Albania to Kosovo Highway, connecting Durres with Prishtina.
The Durres-Kukes motorway became fully open to traffic only in October 2010. Its major 60 km Rreshen-Kalimash segment was built by Bechtel-Enka, a US-Turkish consortium.