Students from Echmiadzin held a protest against the Yerevan Municipality`s decision to ban the Matenadaran terminal for bus #203.

ArmInfo. The Yerevan Municipality's decision to return the terminus for the #203 bus route between Echmiadzin and Yerevan to the Kilikia bus station has sparked a protest by students in Vaghrashapat.

Students who disagree with the municipality's decision staged a protest at the Matenadaran on Mashtots Avenue, demanding that the terminus be maintained there.

In a conversation with journalists, Gevorg Stepanyan, a member of the Yerevan Council of Elders from the Mother Armenia opposition faction who joined the students' protest, recalled that the authorities had previously attempted to ban buses from stopping at the Matenadaran, but abandoned the idea following public outcry. "Today, the mayor's office issued a new clarification, according to which buses will be able to take passengers to the Matenadaran, but they will be prohibited from stopping there and waiting for new passengers. But winter is coming soon. The problem for students is that they will be dropped off in this area, after which the bus will leave. How will they then get to the bus station to return to Echmiadzin? Meanwhile, the increase in fares for the red lines has not affected the traffic situation. Traffic jams are constant in Yerevan because the authorities have issued 20,000 construction permits. There is no need to shift the blame for this to residents of the regions," Stepanyan emphasized.

He noted that restricting regional transport access to the city will not help solve the problem of traffic congestion. In his opinion, the main causes are the excessive number of construction permits, road repairs that drag on for months, and numerous potholes in the roads that are not repaired in a timely manner. "But Yerevan isn't big enough to build luxury buildings everywhere," Stepanyan noted.

Students, in turn, noted that bus #203 operates on a limited schedule that doesn't take into account the needs of second-shift students. One of the protesters stated that the Mayor's Office's new statement hasn't actually solved the problem. "If Yerevan City Hall

believes that bus #203 is the cause of traffic jams, they should back that up with concrete calculations," she said.

According to the student, the proposed measure could worsen the traffic situation rather than improve it. "Without the opportunity to use buses, passengers will be forced to travel to the capital by taxi, which can accommodate significantly fewer people. "As a result, the number of cars entering Yerevan can only increase," explained one of the students.

As a reminder, after the so-called Velvet Revolution, minibuses from Echmiadzin began stopping near the Matenadaran instead of the Kilikia bus station. In the absence of parking spaces, they often parked double-wide, creating serious obstacles for other road users. Amid severe traffic congestion in the Armenian capital, Yerevan City Hall remembered that the final stop for these minibuses was the bus station, not the Matenadaran, and banned them from traveling in that direction. This sparked public outrage. Citizens complained that this decision was hitting their pockets. In this regard, the mayor's office issued a statement on November 12 that the final stop for bus #203 serving the Echmiadzin-Yerevan route will remain the Kilikia bus station, but the shuttle bus will be allowed to travel to the area adjacent to the Matenadaran exclusively for student drop-off and pick-up.