The import of secondhand buses, which was proposed to renovate the aging transportation fleet in the capital, has been rejected by the government, a member of Tehran City Council’s Transportation Commission said.
Mohammad Ali Karouni added that the government has rejected the proposal and is thinking of alternative solutions for renovating the road fleet, YJC reported.
During a meeting on Sunday, Mohammad Alikhani, the head of Transportation Commission, had voiced his objection to the proposal, stressing that secondhand buses will only add to the air pollution problem choking the metropolis.
“Officials should widen their horizon and make efforts to equip the public transport fleet with electric buses,” Alikhani said, adding that there are domestic and foreign companies ready to help realize this goal.
Experts believe that the expanding metropolis needs 10,000 buses to offer decent commuting to its 12 million residents.
This is while Tehran's public transportation fleet has 6,000 buses, half of which are dilapidated, unusable and ready to head to the scrap yard. Some of the vehicles are over two decades old and have long outlived their usefulness.
Earlier, speaking to ISNA, Peiman Sanandaji, the head of Tehran Bus Company, emphasized that the import of secondhand buses should be considered as a serious option for renovating the capital’s dilapidated fleet.
“Since the Iranian rial has lost almost 70% of its value over the past year and the country cannot afford to import new buses in large numbers, buying secondhand vehicles from other countries that meet emission and quality standards appears to be feasible,” he said.
On Wednesday, the US dollar was traded at 143,000 rials in Tehran. In March 2018, it hardly fetched 42,000 rials.
TBC had been negotiating the option with the officials of Industries Ministry that is in charge of vehicle imports.
Sanandaji said buses under five years of age are much cleaner than the smog-inducing clunkers currently plying the streets of Tehran.
Experts believe effective measures must be taken soon, otherwise things could take a turn for the worse.
