Long-suffering commuters in Yerevan will have to wait for at least two more years for a complete overhaul of the city’s deteriorating system of public transport, Mayor Hayk Marutian said on Friday.
Ever since the mid-1990s, the system has been dominated by minibuses belonging to private companies, many of them owned by government-linked individuals or even government officials themselves. Few of them have invested in their fleet of aging vehicles in the past decade. The minibuses as well as a smaller number of buses provided by the municipality have become even more overcrowded as a result.
A British transport consultancy, WYG, contracted by Yerevan’s former municipal administration in 2016 to propose a detailed plan to revamp the transport network. Former Mayor Taron Markarian essentially accepted the proposals last year, pledging to replace the battered minibuses with new and larger buses by the end of 2018.
Markarian resigned this summer under pressure from Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian, who swept to power in a wave of mass protests that toppled Armenia’s former government. Marutian, a famous TV comedian allied to Pashinian, replaced him as a result of snap mayoral elections held in September.
Marutian said that his administration has found flaws in the WYG plan and told the British firm to conduct further research on the volume of passenger traffic and bus fares that would have to be set in the Armenian capital. WYG, which has already been paid around $1 million for its services, is due to respond to the municipality by February, he said.
The mayor did not exclude that he will ultimately reject WYG’s revised proposals and look for another international consultant.
“Realistically speaking, at least two years are needed for completely replacing the [transport] network,” he told reporters. The process could actually take four years, he added.
Former Mayor Markarian sparked angry protests in 2013 when he raised transport fees by at least 50 percent, citing mounting losses incurred by minibus operators. He scrapped the unpopular measure amid a campaign of civil disobedience led by young activists. Marutian actively participated in that campaign.
The new mayor admitted that the situation with public transport in the city of more than one million residents has deteriorated since then. He blamed the former municipal authorities for the problem, saying that their stated efforts to address it may have been just an imitation.
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