The price hike initiated by Mayor Tigran Avinian was particularly drastic in the city’s central Kentron district. The fixed annual price of on-street parking there jumped from 12,000 drams to 160,000 drams ($400). The hourly fee was raised from 100 drams to 300 drams in Kentron and 200 drams in other parts of Yerevan.
The main declared purpose of the measure was to reduce mounting traffic congestion in the city center. The two main opposition groups represented in the city council dismissed that explanation. One of them, the Mayr Hayastan bloc, challenged the measure in court in February.
A Yerevan court of first instance ruled last Thursday that the price hike is unfounded and therefore null and void. But it also rejected Mayr Hayastan’s demand to require the municipal administration to reimburse motorists for the higher parking fees paid by them this year.
Despite that ruling, the city council approved Avinian’s proposal to keep the new tariffs in place in 2025. Deputy Mayor Suren Grigorian said that the ruling has not yet come into force and that the municipal administration will challenge it in a higher court.
Grigorian claimed that the higher parking fees have had a “positive impact” on traffic in central Yerevan. Opposition leaders claimed the opposite, pointing to daily traffic jams still occurring there.
The ruling Civil Contract party, of which Avinian is a senior member, and its local coalition partner, the Hanrapetutyun party, do not have an absolute majority in the council. They managed to push through the decision thanks to the effective backing of one of the nominally independent members of the legislature, Grigor Harutiunian.
Harutiunian used to be affiliated with an obscure party led by Vartan Ghukasian, a U.S.-based video blogger wanted by Armenian law-enforcement authorities. The party, which claimed to be in opposition to the Armenian government, helped Civil Contract to install Avinian as mayor in October 2023.