Qyteti

Tirana City Talks, Veliaj: We are creating a coordinated system for public transport 

Tirana City Talks, Veliaj: We are creating a coordinated system for public

Mobility and the current challenges of circulation in the capital, but also the perspectives of alternative mobility, were the focus of the meeting organized by the Municipality of Tirana, with the participation of architects and representatives from the local and central government. The meeting discussed future visions and priorities in the development of mobility in the city.

Present at this table, the head of the Municipality of Tirana, Erion Veliaj emphasized the regional role of Tirana, which, according to him, aims to expand further with the many events and challenges that await the capital in the coming year.

"The chances are that Tirana will always be more and more a regional capital. This year it was the "European Youth Capital", next year it will be the "European City of Sports". There will continue to be a great focus on tourism, on the entrances and exits to the city, on the number of beds that the city offers, on restaurants, on the amount of traffic that the roads can carry", said Veliaj.

Furthermore, he described the trend of Tirana's demographic growth as a challenge that we must adapt to, but at the same time an extraordinary opportunity and as a competition that should produce creative energy for the city.

The Mayor emphasized the fact that mobility in the city and the mobility infrastructure must match the modern infrastructure offered by the city. He appreciated the importance of technology in these processes, considering the innovation of electronic ticketing as good news, but on the other hand expressed the ambition to enable the digitization of other procedures, such as that of obtaining the Student Card.

"We have to devote the rest of our mission to improving the infrastructure at the micro level, at the capillary level. It is very good that we have new schools and a modern infrastructure in the city, but the city's mobility infrastructure must match this new infrastructure, so that we can turn these spaces into epicenters of mobility. For example, bus stops should match where the schools are. This week we received some good news such as the introduction of electronic ticketing by the government and the transport department. What we are doing is to create a coordinated system for urban and interurban transport, which not only facilitates the 'challenge' of receiving the ticket and the elimination of fatorinos, but gives us the opportunity to be not only the authority that licenses transport operators,

He did not leave without mentioning the great challenge of raising people's awareness, in terms of mobility in the city and the need that the city has today, to adapt to the new requirements of the time.

"I was listening to a candidate who said: 'I went out by car and got stuck in traffic.' But you are not stuck in traffic because you are the traffic. As long as you also went out by car, you are contributing to the traffic, so you have lost the right to cry, because like you, 200 thousand others have also gone out, who want to go to work, take their children to school. When even the people who claim to do our job, do not have the basic notion of how mobility works in the city, we have a big challenge ahead of us to explain how we can approach this situation", concluded the mayor.