📰 Tirana · page 3

Infrastructure

Transport

Air

Tirana is served by Nënë Tereza International Airport, which is the main air gateway to the country.165 The airport was officially named in honour of the Albanian Roman Catholic nun and missionary, Mother Teresa.166 It connects Tirana with destinations across Europe, Africa, and Asia.167 The airport carried more than 3.3 million passengers in 2019.168

Road

Tirana's geographical location in the centre of Albania has long established the city as the core terminus for the national road network, thus connecting the city to all parts of Albania and neighbouring countries.[103]169 The Rruga Shtetërore 1 (SH1) connects Tirana with Shkodër and Montenegro corpus in the north, and constitutes a key section of the proposed Adriatic–Ionian motorway.170 The Rruga Shtetërore 2 (SH2) continues in the west and provides direct connection to Durrës on the Adriatic Sea.171 The Rruga Shtetërore 3 (SH3) is being transformed into the Autostrada 3 (A3) and follows the ancient Via Egnatia.172 It is a significant section of the Pan-European Corridor VIII and links the city with Elbasan, Korçë and Greece in the south.173 Tirana is further connected, through the Milot interchange in the northwest, with Kosovo corpus as part of the Autostrada 1 (A1).174

During the communist regime in Albania, a plan for the construction of a ring road around Tirana arose in 1989 but implementation was delayed until the 2010s.[104]175 It is of major importance, especially concerning demographic growth of the Tirana region as well as the Albanian economy.176 Although, constructions for the now completed southern section of the ring road started in 2011, the northern and eastern sections are still in the planning process.[105]177

Rail

Rail lines of Hekurudha Shqiptare (HSH) connected Tirana with all of the major cities of Albania, including Durrës, Shkodër and Vlorë.178 In 2013, the Tirana Railway Station was closed and moved to Kashar by the city government in order to create space for the New Boulevard (Bulevardi i Ri) project.[106]179 The new Tirana Station will be constructed in Laprakë, which is projected to be a multifunctional terminal for rail, tram and bus transportation.[107][108]180 City officials have discussed a light rail extension to the location of the former rail station.[109]181 Construction is underway on a new rail line from Tirana to Nënë Tereza International Airport and Durrës.[109]182

In 2012, the Tirana municipality published a report that construction of two tram lines was under evaluation.183 The tram lines would have a total length of 16.7 km.184 That plan was never implemented.185 Under the plan, the two tram lines would have intersected in Skanderbeg Square.186 Public transport in Tirana is, for now, focused only in the city centre, people living in the suburbs have fewer or no public transport connections.[110]187

Bus

Tirana's bus network is its primary and only system of public transport.188 The system has 16 lines serving the urban core, with another 14 suburban lines serving its outer regions.189 The urban network is made up of 8 radial lines, 5 diagonal lines, and 3 circular or semi-circular lines.[111]190

Busses often get stuck in traffic.191 There were only 7 km of dedicated bus lines in 2020.[111]192

There were 451 bus stops on the entire urban network in 2020, extending to over 170 km.193 Services operate every day, regardless of holidays and weekends, from 06:00 to 24:00.194 The entire network had an average headway of 9 minutes on a daily basis in 2018 and in the first half of 2019.[111]195

Nearly 257,000 residents lived within a 150 m walking area from a bus stop when surveyed in Tirana’s strategic transport study in 2019.196 That was approximately 35% of the population living inside the Municipal unit of Tirana.[111]197

A single-ride ticket costs 40 Lek, and no hourly or daily options are available.198 Disabled people and veterans may ride for free.199 An electronic ticketing system is under implementation.[111]200

Cycling

During the administration of mayor Erion Veliaj, the government of Tirana has significantly increased the creation and expansion of a cycling infrastructure in the city in order to reduce traffic congestion as well as to improve the sustainable transportation.[112][113][114]201 Ecovolis was launched in 2011 offering rental services for bicycles at different centrally located stations for a small fee.[115][116]202 The international bicycle sharing system, Mobike, launched its operations on 8 June 2018 by deploying 4000 bicycles in the city.[117][118]203 Both services were discontinued.204

Safe cycling paths are still relatively rare, despite improvements in recent years.205 Paths are often blocked by parked cars or construction.206 Other obstructions which decrease ride quality, such as drain holes, are also prevalent.207 There were only around 30 km of cycling routes in 2020.[111]208

Education

Tirana has the highest concentration of institutions of tertiary education in Albania, consisting of numerous academies, colleges and universities.209 Most prominent among these is the University of Tirana with campuses around the city and more than 28,000 students from all backgrounds.[119]210 The Polytechnic University of Tirana is another distinguished institution and also the most renowned engineering and technical university in the country.211 The four other public institutions in Tirana are the University of Arts, University of Agriculture, University of Medicine and University of Sports.[119]212

The educational system of Tirana has expanded substantially over the past years with the renovations of existing school facilities and the construction of new schools.[120][121]213 For primary and secondary education, a variety of schools are available, tagged with the public, private and international labels.214 Some of the international schools are the Tirana International School, Albanian International School, British School, Montessori School, Memorial School and World Academy.215 The public primary and secondary Servete Maçi School won an award at the 2020 International Architecture Awards.[122]216

Health

There are numerous public and private hospitals as well as smaller public and private health care facilities in the territory of Tirana.217 The Mother Teresa University Hospital is one of the largest medical tertiary institutions of the country.218 Other medical institutions include the Shefqet Ndroqi University Hospital, Koço Gliozheni Hospital, Mbretëresha Gjeraldinë Hospital and the Military Hospital.219

Demography

According to the 2023 census, the municipality of Tirana had 598,176 residents, of whom 583,963 were born in Albania and 14,213 abroad.220 With a population density of 502 people per square kilometre, Tirana is the most densely populated municipality in the country.[5]221 The encompassing metropolitan area, consisting of the regions of Durrës and Tirana, has a combined population of approximately 1 million, amounting to nearly one third of the country's total population.[123]222

Historically, Tirana has experienced a steady population increase, especially after the fall of communism in the late twentieth century as well as the beginning of the twenty-first century.223 The remarkable growth was, and still is, largely fuelled by migrants from all over the country, often in search of employment and improved living conditions.224 Between 1820 and 1955, the population of Tirana tenfolded, while during the period from 1989 to 2011 the city's population grew annually by approximately 2.7%.225 In the 19th and 20th centuries, the city had a rate of growth of less than 1% annually until the 1970s, then down to less than 8% per year until the middle 20th century figures.[124]226

Among residents born in Albania, the majority were born in Tirana itself (310,084), but the municipality has long been the principal internal migration destination in the country.227 Large communities trace their birthplace to Dibër (38,612), Korçë (35,667), Fier (30,290), Berat (30,254), Kukës (27,246), Elbasan (26,258) and Gjirokastër (25,885), with additional groups from Shkodër (18,226), Vlorë (15,599), Durrës (14,371) and Lezhë (11,471).228 The inflows from north-eastern mountainous prefectures such as Dibër and Kukës, from the south-eastern and southern interior around Korçë, Berat, Gjirokastër and Elbasan, and from coastal areas including Durrës, Vlorë and Lezhë illustrate a predominantly rural-to-urban and intra-regional migration pattern oriented toward the capital.229 These movements intensified after the early 1990s, when internal mobility restrictions were lifted, and include both long-distance migration from remote highland municipalities and short-distance relocation within central Albania.230 The resulting settlement pattern combines older urban neighbourhoods with rapidly urbanised former rural areas on the city’s outskirts and along main transport corridors.231 This wide geographic spread reflects the city’s dominant role as Albania’s administrative, educational and economic centre and has contributed to its rapid demographic expansion and increasing social diversity since the early 1990s.[125]232

According to the 2023 Population and Housing Census profile for Tirana County, the population is predominantly of Albanian ethnicity (91.0%), followed by small minorities of Greeks (0.26%), Aromanians (Vlachs) (0.10%), Macedonians (0.06%), Montenegrins (0.03%), Roma (0.22%), Egyptians (0.13%), Bosniaks, Serbs, Bulgarians and Italians (each below 0.05%).233 About 8% of residents did not declare or provided no ethnic affiliation.234 The majority of inhabitants reported Albanian as their mother tongue (94.7%), with smaller proportions declaring Greek (0.4%), Aromanian (0.2%), or other and multiple languages (1.1%).[126]235

The life expectancy at birth in Tirana is 82.8 years, 84.5 years for women and 81 years for men,[127] exceeding that of wealthier capital cities in Western Europe such as Vienna corpus[128] and Berlin corpus.[129]236

Religion in Tirana

In Albania, a secular state with no state religion, the freedom of belief, conscience and religion is explicitly guaranteed in the constitution of Albania.[130][131]237 Tirana is religiously diverse and has many places of worship catering to its religious population whom are adherents of Islam, Christianity and Judaism but also of Atheism and Agnosticism.238 They all maintain their Albanian headquarters spread across the territory of Tirana.239 Nevertheless, the Bektashi Order leadership established their world centre also in the city.240

Notes241

• † Unaffiliated believers: corresponds to the Census category “I don’t belong to any religion, but I am a believer”, as defined in the 2011 Population and Housing Census of Albania.[132]242
• ‡ No response / other: includes respondents who selected “other”, “prefer not to answer”, or whose response was recorded as invalid/undetermined.243
• Data by administrative unit are based on detailed tabulations of religious affiliation from the 2011 Population and Housing Census of Albania for the 11 administrative units of Tirana, provided by the Albanian Institute of Statistics (INSTAT) to the NGO “Res Publica”.[133]244

In the 2011 census, 55.7% of the population of the municipality of Tirana was counted as Muslim, 3.4% as Bektashis and 11.8% as Christian including 5.4% as Roman Catholic and 6.4% as Eastern Orthodox.[134]245 The remaining 29.1% of the population reported having no religion or did not provide an adequate answer.246 The 2023 census did not publish municipality level religious statistics for Tirana.247 County level results for Tirana County, where the municipality accounts for the clear majority of residents (598,176 out of 758,513, 78.86%), reported the following composition: 48.67% Islam (Sunni or non denominational), 4.94% Bektashi, 5.01% Orthodox, 4.66% Catholic, 0.75% Evangelical or other Christians, 3.65% atheists, 15.54% believers without a religion/denomination, and 16.70% not stated or other.[135]248