Transport in Albania consists of transport by land, water and air, which are predominantly under the supervision of the Ministry of Infrastructure of Albania. The development and improvement of the transport in the country remains among the most important priorities of the Government of Albania. It has experienced significant changes and major growth and expansion in recent years, especially after the fall of communism in the country. Improvements to the road infrastructure, urban transport, and air travel have all led to a vast improvement in transportation. These upgrades have played a key role in supporting Albania's economy, which in the past decade has come to rely heavily on the construction industry. History Since antiquity, the area of modern Albania served as a crossroad of important caravan routes such as the Roman Via Egnatia linking the Adriatic with Byzantium (later Constantinople). The Italian fascist regime of Mussolini carried out a project of road constructions in Albania in the 1930s, yet auto-mobility was limited at the time. The total length of Albania's roads more than doubled in the first three decades after World War II, and by the 1980s almost all of the country's remote mountain areas were connected, either by dirt or paved roads, with the capital city of Tirana, and ports on the Adriatic and Ionian Sea. After 1947, a significant infrastructure undertaking was the construction of the country's rail network as Albania was considered the only country in Europe not to have standard rail service. By 1987, 677 km of railway were constructed in total linking the main urban and industrial centers for the first time since the end of World War II. Train transport was the main public transportation method until 1990. After the collapse of Communism, the network fell into disregard, operating with second-hand carriages in a constant precarious state. Central government funding of local road maintenance effectively ended in 1991, and the breakdown of repair vehicles because of a lack of spare parts threatened to close access to some remote areas. A group of Greek construction companies signed a protocol with the Albanian government in July 1990 to build a 200 kilometer road across the southern part of the country, extending from the Albanian-Greek border to Durrës. The project was scheduled to last four years and cost US$500 million. Despite the poor quality of Albania's roads, most of the country's freight was conveyed over them in