Polluting Public Transportation System, Main Reason for Air Pollution

KhodroCar – Tehran and other cities in Iran are facing pollution problems which put people’s health at risk. In the winter, pollution will be more due to the temperature inversion, so most of the Iranian didn’t experience a non polluted day.

In this situation, the government has 2 options. First is setting traffic plans an the second is encouraging people to use public transportation instead of personal vehicle.
Governmental officials has established a lot of statistics in the past month, since the pollution began. One interesting statistic is about worn out cars. There are 1.35 million worn out cars riding freely in the streets and they are a main reason for the pollution.

There were 7.5 million cars in Iran, but it has increased to 20 million cars today. Meanwhile, 1.35 million cars are scrapped and they are making pollution. 74 percent of minibuses, 54 percent of urban buses, 42 percent of suburban buses, 48 percent of taxies and trucks, 22 percent of pickups, 19 percent of governmental vehicles, 3 percent of personal vehicles are worn out and need to be replaced. Also, these numbers are increasing every year.

Most experts agree about the polluting motorcycles. Right now, there are 11 million motorcycles in the country and 90 percent of them have a carburetor engine. According to statistics, 10.1 percent of Tehran’s pollution is because of the motorcycles.

The public transportation system is a perfect way to reduce the air pollution, but it is opposite in Iran. According to statistics, suspended particles in air are a main part of air pollution. 70 percent of these suspended particles in air are released by the vehicles and we can see the big share of public transportation in the air pollution statistics.

Personal vehicles: 1.4 percent

Heavy vehicles: 22.4 percent

Private sector buses: 18.2 percent

Public buses: 12.6 percent

Motorcycles: 10.5 percent

Minibuses: 4.2 percent

Statistics are perfectly, showing the bigger share of public transportation in Tehran’s pollution. Experts believe that renovating and updating the public transportation system, such as using new technologies and electric vehicles could be good for air and people’s health.

Updating public transportation system would be great for the country, but it is not happening in our country very well. 2nd international exhibition of transportation and urban services was an example of Iran’s worst situation in renovating public transportation because all of the vehicles were diesel and few companies were showing electric motorcycles.

"Renovation and modernization of public transportation was in the clean air bill, but some of the governments and the organization's premises have not been executed yet.” Said Zhoma Javaher Pour to KhodroCar reporter. "2nd international exhibition of transportation and urban services was not very good and showed us that the municipality should give the services to contractor companies. Also, private companies must have planned to renovate and modernize their services and vehicles.”

KhodroCar Reproter: Fazel suri

KhodroCar Translator: Amin Zamani