Traffic

When I first came to Yerevan in March 2006, various locals told me that I might want to hire a driver, as traffic was so horrible, I surely wouldn't want to drive myself.

Coming from Bucharest where traffic was really horrible, I scoffed at this.  Traffic?  You call this traffic? There are hardly any cars on the streets! So I started driving, and it was fine.  The rules about traffic circles scared me a bit at first (you have the right of way entering the circle), especially since those rules are not applied consistently to all traffic circles, but other than that, I had no problems.

Almost two years later, the situation has changed.

There are a lot more cars on the roads. According to one site I found, the vehicle ownership increased by 30% in the last five years but I doubt that.  It looks more like 60% to me.  There has been a particular increase in nice, expensive cars which often come in via Dubai – big SUVs, nice highclass cars, even some minivans (where ours, a Galaxy, was a lone sight for the longest time).  Dealerships for Volkswagen, Mercedes Benz, Ford, Porsche, BMW, Land Rover and many more are shooting up like mushrooms.  Those big, expensive SUVs have three things in common: tinted windows, nice license plates (like 01-US-777), and reckless drivers.  And I mean, really reckless.  Those expensive makes, tinted windows and nice plates advertise to the world one thing: I'm important.  I'm a member of one of the oligarch families, the bad ones, and I don't care if I have to drive over you. I'm outside of the law anyway, so don't mess with me.  And nobody does. (I do, sometimes. Story for another post.)

Apart from the increase in cars, which the city was ill-equipped for, there has been a funny increase in street construction those past months. You would think that this makes sense – after all, if the traffic increases and the roads can't take it anymore, you have to do something about your infrastructure, right?

Well, yes and no.  See, here in Armenia, things work a bit differently.  There are elections for President in February, and before people get voted in, or out (Doug can elucidate you much better about this), money is being spent.

"Oh," I said, "so those people are making sure that their friends are getting the construction contracts before they go out of power?" "No," replied an Armenian friend grimly, "they are making sure that they themselves get the construction contracts before they go out of power."

Yerevan, August 16. /ARKA/. Yerevan's Municipality will allocate $15mln for the construction of a new multilevel traffic centre in the city. The project has been developed, and the construction will be launched in the near future, Gurgen Mousheghian, Director of the "Yerevanproject" institute reported today."

A crosswalk and an elevated road will be built under the construction of a new traffic centre between Brother Orbeli and Baghramian Streets," Mousheghian said.

According to him, another elevated road will be constructed in the crossroads of Baghramian and Kasian Streets. He pointed out that the construction of the traffic center will secure the safety of traffic in the Square of Friendship. "The sidewalk will operate on the "zero" level, a highway in the crossroads of Kievyan and Kochar Streets will be on the first level, while the third level will join Baghramian and Kasian Streets", Mousheghian said. In his turn, Karen Yedigarian, Director of the "Yerevantrans" CJSC pointed out that The Square of Friendship will be closed till the end of the year as a result of the construction. "Traffic will pass at "alternative" streets. These are Gyulbekian, Avetisian, Kochar, Kalents Streets and Komitas Avenue," he said.

Yedigarian said the City Administration apologizes to the citizen's for causing inconvenience. "Comfortable traffic of Yerevan will compensate all the difficulties of the forthcoming four months," he said.

Via Armenian Diaspora [some editing done by me]

 

So we have frantic construction going on, all of it probably necessary, but at the same time?

The area we live in, Arapkir, has three "outlets" for us – down the hill road, down on Kochar Street, and down on Komitas street. Both the hill road and Komitas are being worked on (something that Yedigarian either didn't know, or neglected to acknowledge back in August), and as a consequence Kochar is so congested that it sometimes takes me an hour just to get to the bottom of the hill to Friendship Square - mere two kilometer drive. Armenian drivers are, hm, self-centered to begin with. Nobody gives way, nobody gives in, everybody is in a rush, and everybody must go NOW. This is the result:

I personally think even a $5 fine for blocking the box would do the trick but there seems to be no action on the side of the traffic police. On the contrary, at rush hour, traffic police often take over directing the traffic patterns in direct contrast to the traffic lights – and they bungle things up so badly that the other day, I stood at the same spot for twenty minutes, watching the traffic light cycle no less than 12 times through "green" for me, before I was able to cross that intersection. With three little boys in the car, at 8:30 pm, after a Halloween party. Pure joy. (Also, I think those four months cited above are  wishful thinking at the best. )

The hole on Baghramian street is so deep, I got dizzy when I drove past the other day. Why they have to dig an excavation the size of Texas to build an overpass eludes me, but what do I know of road construction? Why they have to dig up Komitas and tear out the street car tracks at a time when Komitas is supposed to take over traffic that gets diverted from other streets, I can also not tell you. It's an Armenian mystery.

Oh, and those overpasses…  Did I mention that Yerevan lies smack in the middle of a nice earthquake zone?  Happiness.

So, yes. We have traffic now. Much worse traffic than I ever encountered before and I hide out in Arapkir as much as I can and avoid going downtown at all costs. Of course, people coming from Cairo or Almaty merely scoff at our traffic here. Hell has many circles indeed.

Comments

[Bruce Tasker]

The sudden increase in traffic has not gone unnoticed, especially for those who regularly drive the streets of Yerevan. At first it seemed the jams were because of the building of new underground emporiums, which has recently become the craze. But although these create havoc, that is not the full story. The overriding reason for the upsurge is more subtle; it is the result of removing roadside traffic police from the streets. Remember the time when the everyday Tomian, Dickian and Harryan would dread taking to the road for fear of being pulled aside by a roadside traffic cop. Maybe his car didn't gleam as much as the officer thought it might have done, or possibly the front windscreen had a crack in it. These appalling violations would attract a minimum mandatory fine of 1,000 Drams, whilst a genuine traffic offence would cost anything up to 10,000 Drams. At holiday times and other cop-shop party times this could happen to the everyday family man several times in a single journey. And to add to the pleasure, whilst he would be surreptitiously paying his dues, he would have the privilege of watching how the traffic cop would completely ignore the elite in their specially numbered SUV’s tearing up and down the wrong sides of the roads, brushing aside women, children and pensioners on their pedestrian crossings, and jumping any amount of red lights.
Why would the authorities deprive these traffic police of their very profitable pastime; after all they were a vital part of the regime? The answer is of course so that the everyday Tomian, Dickian and Harryan would have no second thoughts about sitting at the wheel of his banger and taking to the roads. The result was exactly as planned, and so now there are many more cars on the roads, piling up on top of each other in the bottlenecks caused by the underpasses, and burning up more fuel, much to the joy of the fuel barons. This is understandable, there is an election coming up, and that will be a very expensive affair. But if a very small percentage of the added profits could have been allocated to pay for a few of those thousands of redundant traffic police to control the constant traffic jams, then maybe the everyday Tomian, Dickian and Harryan would have even more reason to be less disgruntled with his life?