The Albanian Road Authority (ARRSH) has opened this week a tender procedure for the procedure that has as its object the supervision of the maintenance process of the Llogara Tunnel with a limit fund of Euro 116,000.

In the procedure documents, ARRSH specifies that this contract is linked to another one, specifically the “Maintenance of equipment and operation of the Llogara Tunnel”. The latter was opened in March as a competition and provided for a limited fund of Lek 311 million or Euro 3.1 million.

“The Llogara Tunnel Project, which is part of the Orikum-Himara road, second lot, is a transformative project for the development of infrastructure with an impact on the economy and tourism of the country on the South coast,” the Road Authority said in the tender document.

“This project will help ease traffic between coastal cities and villages that lie on the South coast, reduce travel time, reduce the number of accidents, and improve road safety, thus avoiding the passage of the Llogara Pass, which is evidenced as a very difficult road in a mountainous terrain, especially in the winter,” the ARRSH documents state.

The second lot of the Orikum-Himara road, in which the Llogara Tunnel is located, begins 500 m northwest of the Shën Eliza bridge on the Dukat-Llogara road segment and ends 1.3 km west of the Palasa bridge. The total length of the route is 7.42 km.

“The most important part of this work is the Main Tunnel and the Emergency Tunnel. The Main Tunnel has a length of 5.99 km, taking into account the portals, next to which at an axial distance of 40 m lies the Emergency Tunnel with a length of 6 km, which is currently under construction. The Control Center that monitors the operation of the ventilation, fire protection, lighting, emergency calls, and signaling systems is positioned at the northern portal of the tunnel. Along the tunnel, there are 11 cross-connections with the emergency tunnel, where 5 are for vehicles and 6 for pedestrians. These cross-connections are accompanied by parking lots for vehicles every 1 km on each side, i.e. 6 in the Orikum-Himara movement sensing and 5 in the Himara-Orikum movement sensing,” the document states.

The Tunnel Maintenance Supervisor (representative of the Employer) will assist/monitor the process of taking delivery of the inventory by the Tunnel Maintenance/Monitoring Contractor, which will be an integral part of the tunnel equipment and machinery on an ongoing basis.