There are over 12,000 taxis in Karaj, capital of Alborz Province west of Tehran, of which one-third are over two decades old.
According to Karaj Municipality head of transportation affairs, Majid Kazemi, 4,700 taxis are clunkers releasing toxic emissions into the air, Mehr News Agency reported.
“As is the case in many cities, old and dilapidated cars are the main source of air pollution in Alborz,” he says.
Close to 18% of the country’s road traffic passes through Alborz as many highways connecting Tehran to other provinces criss-cross Alborz.
Alborz region is almost always congested. A large number of its residents travel to and from Tehran every day for work, clogging the roads linking the two important trade and industrial provinces. This alone is a big source of air pollution. Throw into the pot the old cabs plying Alborz streets and alleys.
Kazemi said the municipality is working on a scheme to equip 4,000 polluting taxis with catalytic converters to curb air pollution.
The tool is an exhaust emission control device that converts toxic gases and pollutants in exhaust gas from an internal engine into less-toxic pollutants by catalyzing an oxidation and a reduction reaction.
“Karaj Municipality is in talks with government organizations to finance the project,” he added.
Pointing to the official inaction regarding introduction and enforcement of scrappage schemes of clunkers, Kazemi says that if the polluting public transportation vehicles are sent to the junkyard and fuel-efficient taxis and buses take their place, the quality of life will improve significantly in the expanding province.
A controversial government directive proposed in September 2017, committed local automotive companies to send one old car to the junkyard if they produced cars with fuel consumption over 8.5 liters per 100km. However, the scrappage scheme itself landed in the scrap yard for it was said “to have a major negative impact on the domestic industries and led to higher prices.”
More than 1.5 million people use taxis for transportation in Karaj every day.
