Summer came with cycling lovers becoming more and more active in Yerevan. They have several places of gathering in the city, but the most famous one is the park located by the Karen Demirchyan Sports & Concert Complex. Here almost every day one can meet cyclists, mainly habitants of the neighboring districts. But the real “wheel stir” starts on Saturdays and Sundays, when dozens of cyclists from almost all the districts of the capital come here their number increasing week after week. Roughness of Yerevan’s landscape is not so favorable for cycling, and the roads have never had routes intended for bicycles.
Whereas a group of Armenian cyclists, disregarding these obstacles, have decided to start a cycle move in the city for the drivers and pedestrians to get used to their presence as part of the city traffic. “There are no conditions for cycling in Yerevan. The drivers are ill-disposed towards us: they signal or don’t make way for cycles looking at us as if we are from another planet,” says a professional cyclist Samvel Hovhannisyan.
Summer came with cycling lovers becoming more and more active in Yerevan. They have several places of gathering in the city, but the most famous one is the park located by the Karen Demirchyan Sports & Concert Complex. Here almost every day one can meet cyclists, mainly habitants of the neighboring districts. But the real “wheel stir” starts on Saturdays and Sundays, when dozens of cyclists from almost all the districts of the capital come here their number increasing week after week. Roughness of Yerevan’s landscape is not so favorable for cycling, and the roads have never had routes intended for bicycles.
Whereas a group of Armenian cyclists, disregarding these obstacles, have decided to start a cycle move in the city for the drivers and pedestrians to get used to their presence as part of the city traffic. “There are no conditions for cycling in Yerevan. The drivers are ill-disposed towards us: they signal or don’t make way for cycles looking at us as if we are from another planet,” says a professional cyclist Samvel Hovhannisyan.
To engage more people in cycle movement and to propagandize the usefulness of bicycle, every week Samvel with the help of several volunteer-cyclists organizes cycling courses for anyone who wants to learn riding. Samvel provides also with cycles. He brings them from his father’s workshop (there are two cycle repairing workshops in Yerevan) located not far from the park. The same bicycles are used also during the rides to the outskirts of town and are given to those who haven’t yet managed to acquire their own.
“Generally girls participate in the courses, most of them having never cycled. They learn to ride in one-two days. After cycling in the parks we organize rides on short distance streets of the city. When they become more skillful, they participate in the rides to the countryside,” says Samvel. Knara Ter-Hovhannisyan, 25, is an active participant of cycling courses and says she learns cycling not only for pleasure.
“Later I intend to use bicycle as a vehicle. I’m going to buy a cycle and go to work on it. Though my office is quite far from my home, I think I would overcome that distance, if, of course, I learn well,” says Knara. About 30 and sometimes 100 cyclists participate in the rides. Cycle rides are promoted and informed about through the activists’ personal blogs and social networks, as well as through the “Cycling Armenia!” page opened in facebook with already more than 300 registered supporters. Recently there was an announcement here telling that one of the city drugstores is seeking a cyclist-distributor to realize delivery orders in the city center.
“We are just fed up with minibuses, with the music switched on in them, with the permanent traffic jam of the city. I can’t imagine me in a minibus. The cycle is faster to reach somewhere in the city center,” says Tigran Kuchatyan, an activist of cycle movement. “Bicycle is an ecologically pure vehicle not harming the environment and health, and unlike other vehicles it is not mortal,” says Tigran. The young environmentalists of Armenia are the first participants of the cycle movement. For already two years they, by Mariam Sukhudyan’s initiative, have been organizing bicycle rides to those regions of Armenia where the environment needs protection against anthropogenic effects. They have ridden to Teghut forests, as well as towards the “Symphony of Stones” basalt quadras within the Canyon of Azat River, etc.
A few months ago the cyclists applied to the Yerevan Municipality by request to plan separate routes for cycles on the newly constructed roads in the future. “The roads already existing in the city are narrow, it is unrealistic to demand cycle routes on them, but such routes should be planned at least when building new roads,” says Tigran though confessing that the answer given by Municipality hasn’t been reassuring.