The FINANCIAL -- A new tramway will be open to Tbilisi residents in three years’ time.
The length of the new tramline will be 14 Kilometres and it will link the 10th Building of Tbilisi State University to Ortachala crossing Vake. It will serve 100,000 passengers daily. Travel time will be 34 minutes per direction.
Trams are one of the most ecologically clean forms of transport and should alter the high rate of air pollution in Tbilisi . A tramway uses road area eight times more economical than auto transport. Meanwhile it has a special line on the road and is therefore faster.
“The cost of the new project totals approximately 150,000,000 EUR,” said Akaki Jokhadze, Head of the Transport Service at Tbilisi City Hall. “We have ongoing negotiations with several organizations to get funds for this project. After finishing this we will start working on the second tramway line.”
“The tramway has several advantages including being ecologically clean,” he added.
Tbilisi has a responsibility to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide by 20 percent by 2020. The tramway will play a significant role in this, experts say.
Tbilisi City Hall has signed a memorandum with French company Systra. According to the memorandum Systra has prepared the project of a new tramway line. This project was presented a few days ago and the building process will begin in the near future.
Experts consider the tramway to be a very positive development as it will reduce air pollution in Tbilisi significantly. The local result will be reduced emissions in the air. And at the same time it will have an influence on minimizing the effects of climate change. The more that world emissions decrease, the less of a negative effect global warming will have.
Making Tbilisi greener is one of the main strategies of Tbilisi Hall. More and more parks are being built in the capital. But still the share of green areas and parks per resident in Tbilisi is very low.
“According to international standards the share of green area per resident should be 25 square meters,” said Giorgi Korkashvili, Director of the Ecology and Greenery Department of Tbilisi City Hall. “This rate was 8 square meters in Tbilisi in 2009. But since then the situation has been improving significantly.”
“Tbilisi residents planted about 30,000 seeds of different trees last year under this project,” Korkashvili said. “This is not enough, but we have long-term projects of greening the city and making it ecologically cleaner. All of this combined should make Tbilisi ’s air that much less polluted.”
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