Economist magazine writes about Albania’s railways

TIRANA, July 20 – As Albania tries to get EU membership the prestigious magazine, The Economist, has covered the disastrous state of the country’s railway system.
Below is The Economist’s blog entry about Albania.
“In Albania people look at me blankly when I tell them I am going to take the train from Tirana to Shkoder in the north.
I soon understood that most of my friends did not even realize that Albanian railways still existed. Before the fall of communism in Albania there were no private cars or buses, and so virtually the only way to get around was by train. Then, 20 years ago, the vast majority of Albanians simply stopped taking trains and never thought about them again.
They do still exist. But Tirana railway station can hardly be described as bustling. It has only one kiosk selling tickets, and two quiet platforms. Before my trip I arranged to meet some railway officials. As we walked to their office I asked them why many of the railway-carriage windows seemed to have bullet holes in them. They replied that in some areas, children pelted the carriages with rocks. Whether they were egged on to do soذaid by the owners of private coach and mini-bus companies, aiming to scare people off the trainsشhey could not say.
Then the magazine refers to Gramos Gjikolli, the infrastructure manager of Albanian railways.
It also mentions that the first trains appeared in Albania as early as 1890 and over the next half century several small networks were built, either for mines or military purposes. But it was only with the arrival of the communists that the modern network was constructed. Today there are 425 kilometers of track and Gjikolli is eager to tell me the story of the rise and fall of Albanian railways.
The period between 1975 and 1989 was the golden age. The trains carried 60% of all passenger traffic. Now that figure is less than 1%. In 1989 the trains carried 10.5m passengers but last year that number was 650,000. In 1989 the railways carried 25,000 tonnes of freight a day but in 2009 they were carrying barely 25-30,000 tonnes a month. In 1989 the railways employed more than 8,000 people. That figure now stands at 1,720, and 95% of them are on the minimum wage, which amounts to 123 euros.
Last year the railways had an income of 9 million euros, of which 5 million euros came straight from the government. The rest was from freight and renting out railway premises. From selling tickets there came only 346,153 euros.
In theory they have 78 locomotives, but only 18 to 20 actually work, and the rest are cannibalized to keep the others going.
In 2003 Fatos Nano, the then prime minister of Albania, signed a contract worth 74.71m euro with General Electric to modernize the stretch of railway from Tirana to Durres on the coast and to build a short spur linking Tirana airport to the city. The deal was to end in tears. Deemed far too expensive, the contract was canceled by the incoming government of Sali Berisha, and became the subject of bitter litigation. In March a US court ordered the Albanians to pay $20.6m in compensation to GE and in May the Albanian authorities announced they would sue the minister of transport responsible for the contract for abuse of power.”
The magazine blog continues to write that an EU feasibility study has been completed and if the project is approved it could see up to 225 million euros being used to fix much of the network.