by Davit Beglaryan
In Yerevan, normal life is becoming the exception and chaos the rule. Streets are dug up, repaired, and sometimes dug up again. Before work in one area is finished, construction begins elsewhere. Roads close, traffic comes to a standstill, public transportation remains unreliable, and utility disruptions have become part of everyday life.
For years, residents have been told that these problems are the inevitable cost of reform. They are expected to be patient, adapt, and wait. But when temporary inconveniences continue year after year, they can no longer be dismissed as temporary.
The problem goes beyond public frustration. A 2024 investigation by Infocom, based on Yerevan Municipality data, found that 54 of approximately 280 streets repaired that year were covered by at least two separate contracts. Journalists also documented cracks, potholes, and other defects on Movses Khorenatsi, Vahan Totovents, and Vagharshyan streets despite millions of drams spent on repairs.
Other cases raised questions about coordination. On Tumanyan Street, newly laid asphalt was reportedly dug up again, while on Gai Avenue, fresh road markings were damaged by subsequent repairs.
Road maintenance is necessary. But repeated construction, recurring defects, and poorly coordinated projects raise legitimate questions about planning, oversight, and the use of public funds. Residents bear the consequences through lost time, disrupted routines, and prolonged traffic congestion.
The Yerevan Municipality, led by Tigran Avinyan, is responsible for ensuring that infrastructure projects are properly coordinated and supervised. Citizens should not have to repeatedly reorganize their lives around construction without clear explanations of why previous work failed or further interventions became necessary.
But the cost of this dysfunction is not measured in money and wasted hours alone. It can also affect how people relate to those in power.
In authoritarian systems, control is not exercised solely through police pressure, political persecution, or restrictions on free speech. One of its less visible mechanisms can be the disruption of everyday life.
Someone who spends hours getting to work, navigating construction sites, waiting for unreliable transportation, and dealing with utility failures has little energy left for anything else. Public concerns gradually take a back seat to the immediate struggle of managing daily life.
Over time, frustration can turn into resignation. People begin accepting problems they once expected to be solved. Psychology describes a related phenomenon as learned helplessness, when repeated experiences of powerlessness weaken a person’s belief that change is possible.
This has consequences for civic life. Organizing, demanding accountability, and defending one’s rights require time, energy, and confidence that those efforts can make a difference. Constant disruption can gradually drain all three.
It can also lower public expectations.
A reopened road, a bus arriving on time, or a restored utility service begins to look like an achievement rather than the fulfillment of a basic municipal responsibility. The authorities receive credit for doing what they were supposed to do all along, while citizens are expected to be grateful for services they have every right to demand.
Whether this disruption is deliberate or the result of poor management, its political consequences deserve attention. A society exhausted by everyday difficulties has fewer resources to question decisions, organize collectively, or hold those responsible to account.
A citizen’s time is not an unlimited resource for the authorities to consume. Every hour lost to avoidable disruption is time taken from work, family, rest, and participation in public life.
Yerevan’s problem is therefore not simply its damaged roads, traffic congestion, or unreliable utilities. It is the normalization of a system in which residents must continually struggle for conditions that functioning public institutions should already provide.
A society does not have to be stripped of its freedoms to become less capable of exercising them. When people spend their days struggling with problems that should have been solved, they have less time and energy to challenge the system responsible for them.
