Yerevan municipality to hire private operators to run public transportation system

YEREVAN, June 3. /ARKA/. The Yerevan Municipality plans to hire private operators to run the city's public transportation system, Mayor Hrachya Sargsyan said in the parliament on Friday.

"At the moment, together with the Ministry of Territorial Administration and Infrastructure, we are preparing draft amendments to the law On Transport in order to be able to attract private operators to the organization of the public transport of Yerevan," he said at a joint meeting of the parliamentary standing committees.

Sargsyan specified that according to the proposed amendments, the Municipality will pay private operators for each kilometer so that they don't have to think about getting money from citizens.

"We are working to resolve the public transport problems step by step. I ask my fellow citizens to wait a little until the problems are finally solved," he said.

Sargsyan recalled that last year the Municipality bought 211 new buses, and last month an agreement was concluded to buy 87 more 12-meter buses.

"Next week we plan to announce a tender for the purchase of 150 new buses. We expect to receive them by the end of December," he said.

Sargsyan also said a tender for development and installment of a single fair payment system had been announced earlier, but there were problems with the contract.

According to him, the issue will be solved within a week and a pilot cashless ticket payment system will be introduced on one of the capital's routes. --0--