Transportation area – automobile transportation. Venue of services – Yerevan. According to Yerevan municipality website, transportation in Yerevan is implemented through buses, trolleys and minibuses, as well as metro.
As a consumer, I would like to mention issues with each type of transport.:
1. Metro: best vehicle I ever use. Not enough carriages though.
2. Buses: Supposed to be the best solution to current transport problems but recently seems to acquire issues similar to minibuses- remote stops, tight space and bad parking. In addition, it allows standing passengers.
3. Trolley: very predictable, and doesn’t jam or ruin traffic. But is not sufficient and is slow. Municipality vows to improve this transportation soon.
4. Minibus: main source of problems. Similar to bus issues plus great likelihood to stand o feet.
Municipality website has a list of all numbers of buses, minibuses and trolleys. This was considered a big step.
Now let’s looks t things from a different viewpoint.
Metro: the price for metro was doubled reaching 100 AMD. Originally the plan was to channel the money to renovate and upgrade the metro system. But the system is not transparent and no visible results were found. The problem is about lack of access to information.
Buses: According to the site, buses are operated by “BUS” Ltd based on contract.
Minibuses: the site says that minibuses are operated by private entities.
The legislation gives the definition and role of public transportation for organizing public life in the country.
Transporter is the private entity or individual that performs the service.
Client is legal or physical entity which makes use of the service.
As seen from the list above we use services of contractors for bus transportation.
The legislation also stipulates that transportation be organized based on contracts.
Transportation law article 15, point A , each citizen has the right to buy a ticket and claim a seat. Another interesting point is B which says that citizen can take a seat as reads the ticket. The law was adopted in 1998.
The question is why doesn’t anyone care about so many points of law being violated.
The violations like that can undermine the health and security conditions.
The respective authorities should conduct preventive measures to make sure that all aspects of law are well regarded and followed by all the stakeholders and parties.
In Yerevan the inability to assure a ticket may cause problems. Although it may seem there is no issues with current system of just paying cash and getting a seat, but there are.
A person must have the right to have a document indicating he or she used the certain kind of vehicle and transportation. This is not happening. Instead, the system is chaotic and there is no procedure to track the expenditure or the flow of income and number of passengers served.
Basically, each person pays 2600 AMD tax for the transportation as there is no tracking system. The minibus pays tax only for the number of seats while citizens are standing and multiply exceeding the number of seats in a bus or minibus for that matter.
This issues is also linked to the pension system, where basic pension is 13000 AMD while the reimbursement for each year of employment is 450 AMD and Constitution article 48, point 12 says that the role of government is to secure dignified life of citizens.
So the overstretched transportation system boils down to become the problem of the state? So why are the eyes of the state wide shut?…