Having a Metro in Ajapnyak: Just a Dream - Davit Khajakyan

The city council recently announced that the Russian company "Metrogiprotrans" has been recognized as the winner of the competition for the project of a new metro station in Yerevan's Ajapnyak area. The company has proposed a metro development project worth $500 million to the Armenian government.

However, it turns out that merely organizing a competition and winning it is not enough for the construction of the Ajapnyak station. As stated by Davit Khajakyan, a member of the Light faction in the Yerevan City Council, our legislation allows for a competition to be held without a financial component in the project. "Our legislation permits announcing a competition and recognizing a winner, yet not having the allocated resources, and the city hall says that without government funding, this project is not feasible. Only 500 million drams are needed just for design, which the government has not yet allocated, and I seriously doubt that it will," Khajakyan said in an interview with ArmDaily.am.

According to Khajakyan, meeting the requirements will involve investments in the tens of millions of drams, making it clear that Haik Marutyan will complete his term without laying a single stone for the construction of the Ajapnyak metro station. "These illusions, this imitation of work, is truly an imitation because if the funds for actual construction are absent, you might as well announce competitions for dozens of projects," he remarked.

Regarding Haik Marutyan's pre-election promises about changing elevators and improving transportation, Khajakyan noted, "Let’s acknowledge that there are around 600 elevators being installed, which constitutes a small percentage of the overall elevator fund. Currently, Yerevan has 4,700 elevators, most of which require replacement; replacing just 600 elevators does not mean the problem is solved," Khajakyan stated.

According to Davit Khajakyan, they have always emphasized that solving the elevator issues without implementing proper maintenance mechanisms is a waste of funds, and those elevators will sooner or later break down and reach the same condition as they are today.

On the transportation issue, he noted, "There are 211 buses that have been replaced, about which it has been announced, plus another 100 large capacity 12-meter buses are planned to be acquired through a state loan. Adding the existing buses and Gazelles still means a certain shortfall in capacity, and the city hall intends to involve a private investor in this regard," he indicated, suggesting that they might manage to achieve this by 2022-2023, which is feasible. According to him, if all these buses are unified and integrated into a single system, we can at least say that this reform exists within five years. "I don’t believe that it’s not achievable; perhaps two years was sufficient time to bring it to completion," Khajakyan concluded.