Tbilisi City Hall to buy 40 new subway carriages with EBRD’s funding
By Natalia Kochiashvili
Wednesday, October 16
Tbilisi government session was held yesterday, where the mayor of the capital, Kakha Kaladze announced the new information regarding the transport in Tbilisi.
According to the Mayor of the capital, the City Hall is working on the project with specialists from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), as a result of which 40 new subway passenger carriages are planned to be bought at the first stage, costing around $60 million.
“We have rehabilitated old subway passenger carriages. However, we have exhausted all the passenger cars that can be rehabilitated. So, we have begun working with EBRD to buy 40 new carriages”, said Kakha Kaladze.
Mayor also noted that the planning of making more purchases will have to continue since the old carriages are running out of exploitation date and the need for bringing new ones arises.
“The City Hall currently works on the specifications and is bidding on documentation, a tender will be soon announced. After the purchase, Tbilisi City Hall will continue the process to fully restore the subway. At the same time, rehabilitation of the stations is planned”, said Kaladze at the government session.
The Mayor of the City also informed the public that working on the power cables and the drainage system is underway in the Tbilisi metro and will be completed in July of next year.
The Georgian Government and Tbilisi City Hall announced the plan for an above-ground metro system in October 2018. At the first stage, the ground-based metro will connect the Samgori metro station with the Lilo Market and Tbilisi Airport. At the second stage of development, the metro is planned to be connected to Rustavi City through an above-ground metro.
Tbilisi Mayor also announced that category A taxi owners will be able to receive an interior chemical cleaning voucher from November 1. According to him, the drivers will receive a notification from the City Hall which service center to turn to.
According to the Mayor of Tbilisi, the car owner who will use this voucher will be given a 20% discount card in one of the vehicles technical service networks.
“This offer and the discount card is directly from the winning company. The City Hall will not spend the budget on this. At the first stage, when we announced these vouchers, the activity was very low, so we decided to offer the second stage to the drivers. Our team is doing its utmost to make the taxi service convenient for both, taxi drivers and their customers,” - Kaladze said.
However, Kakha Kaladze said at the meeting of the government of the capital that the taxi reform was quite positive and effective.
“The second stage, as you have all seen, involves the white color and the standard of illumination given to the owners of the vehicles by the municipality. More than 8,000 vehicles are already involved in service delivery,” he announced.
Kaladze also touched upon the third stage of tax reform, which he said will be presented to the public in the near future. According to him, each stage of the reform is related to both security and quality of service.
Another information, that the mayor shared at the session of the capital city government referred to the waste containers. According to him, designing the area for waste containers during the preparation of the construction project will be mandatory. He said the changes to the new regulation will be included in the rule on issuing a building permit.
According to Kaladze, previously the development regulatory plan did not take into account where the bins for waste would be placed, which was a serious problem. Mayor believes that the change will eventually remove the inconvenience for both the population and the municipality.
