Albania and Infrastructure

As I have been driving along Albania’s highways, I can help but think of infrastructure. Infrastructure helped to make America successful.  Without the Transcontinental Railroad, businesses would never have expanded.  But because of this railroad connected both sides of the United States, it encouraged more people to move west. It encouraged more people to invest in different inventions like the telephone and telegraph (which gave us Alexander Graham’s company AT&T) so we could communicate across those long distances.  We could ship goods and people and thus ideas.

 After World War II, the United States government dropped $25 BILLION on the Federal Aid Highway Act (or Interstate Highway act) to build an interstate highway system more than 40,000 miles long in 1956.  Now families could move to the suburbs in their Levitt-style ticky-tacky houses but businesses could also ship goods to more places outside the realm of the railroad.  More people could commute to work, which allowed more people to work.  With the American GI Bill, American vets could get white collar jobs and travel to those new jobs.

The other day we were in Berat, in the southern part of Albania.  A man came up to us and asked where we are from.  After we told him that we were from America, asked if we liked Albania. 

“Of course, we love Albania!  It is so beautiful and everyone is so kind.”

But he shook his head and explained that Albania is nice for tourists but not for Albanians.  “We work for bread” or their work gives them just enough money to live.    

Then I thought back to the drive from Tiranna to Elbasan or from Elbasan to Berat.  They were not long distances.  From Elbasan to Berat is only 30 miles – like going from Battle Creek to Kalamazoo – but it took us an hour and a half to drive it.  From Berat to Vlore is only 54 miles – from Battle Creek to Lansing – but again it took us 2 hours.  And one of the reasons is that Albania does not have a highway system that connects all of their capitals. 

In the United States, I can hop on I-94 and go from Detroit to Minneapolis, Minnesota in one long drive.  Here in Albania, you have to drive up and through other towns.  Or up and around mountains. 

And without that direct highway system, the country continues to live in isolation.  There is no one that can travel to Tirana to work without moving there.  A lack of highway system might be interfering with the tourist industry as there are no good direct routes.  A lack of highway system definitely impacts manufactured goods from being sold inside Albania and out.

There was a reason Roman built roads and it wasn’t just because they wanted all roads to lead there.  Roads are the arteries of a country.  Without them nations and empires will fall.