Karepetyan Confident that Businesses will Come with ‘Their Own Buses’ to Yerevan

There are many problems connected to public transportation in Armenia’s capital, said Yerevan mayor Karen Karapetyan in an interview with Ekho Moskvy (“Echo of Moscow”) radio recently.

To set the city’s rhythm “as befits a metropolis,” the Yerevan mayor intends to solve the problems of public transportation.

“We will move from mini-vans to medium and large buses. Secondly, we have to restrict the entry of intercity buses to Yerevan, since many, apart from the function of moving citizens from Point A to Yerevan, enter the city and burden road traffic.

“Thirdly, we will move to a single payment system (though likely not very soon). This way, there will be a unified system of traffic management for which the operator who controls the cash flow simply pays the transportation carrier [i.e.metro, bus company which in turn pays the drivers] for the work it did, and so, there would be no motivation to make a 14-seater bus into a 17-18-seater bus [i.e. trying to cram more passengers than there are seats in the bus].

“The construction of roads is quite problematic because from a business perspective it’s not very profitable. But [public] transportation is lucrative. If we set the rules of the game clearly, I’m more than confident that businesses will come with their own buses and begin to manage [the system]. When the overall transportation network will be more or less understood, then the unified system of cash flows will be understood,” he said.