No Double Charging: Hovhannisyan on the Unified Ticketing System for Transport

By the end of the year, public transport in Yerevan will fully transition to a unified ticketing system. This was stated in an interview with Sputnik Armenia by Acting Mayor of Yerevan, Levon Hovhannisyan.

Currently, there are no plans to change the fare. “I assure you that there will be no double charging. This means that a citizen will have the opportunity to travel from point A to point B for 100 drams, even if they have to change transport during the trip,” he said.

It should be noted that the pilot version of the unified ticketing system is currently operational on route N1. The Acting Mayor of Yerevan sees the unified ticketing system as one of the steps to improve the quality of public transport, along with another initiative that has already been underway and has shown positive results.

As of August 15, the fleet of city transport no longer includes “Gazelle” minibuses. Currently, around 800 buses are operational on the routes. Of these, 548 are newly acquired Zhongtong and MAN buses (with another 30 expected by the end of the year), while the remaining are Higer brand (lavender colored) buses.

The Yerevan Municipality also plans to replace the outdated Higer buses soon. It is expected that electric buses will be acquired instead, but Hovhannisyan struggled to provide specifics on when they will arrive in Yerevan and when they will join the fleet.

“We are already negotiating, which means that we want to implement this as soon as possible. I believe that within the next two years, we will have 250 electric buses in Yerevan, but that’s at the latest, since we have already gained experience in acquiring buses and I think it will happen quickly,” he noted.

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