Tehran Opens New Metro Line

Twenty-two kilometers of Metro Line 7 (70% of the total line to be constructed) was officially inaugurated on Saturday on the birth anniversary of Imam Hassan (AS), the second Shia Imam.

“Line 7 is the deepest among the metro lines in the city and has the longest tunnel. The line has intersections at all the six other subway lines,” ISNA quoted Maziar Hosseini, Tehran deputy mayor for traffic and transport as saying on Friday.

Once completed in March 2018, Line 7 will be 31 km long with 34 stations, he said, adding that the line’s shallowest depth is 14 meters and at its deepest  56 meters.” Currently the deepest subway station in Tehran is Tajrish at 51 meters.

Twenty trains with 8 coaches each will run on this line. Since its opening on June 10, seven stations on the line have become operational at San’at Square, Tarbiat Moddares University, Shahid Navvab-e Safavi, Komeil, Beryanak, Mohammadiyeh Square, and Basij.

Some other stations on the line will be at Yadegar-e Emam, Paknejad Boulvard, Kaaj Sq, Boostan-e Goft-e-goo, Seoul, Molavi Square, and Qazvin Square, and will start functioning after installation of escalators in the near future, Hosseini added.

Line 7 which is in the final phases of construction connects the southeastern part of Tehran to the northwestern districts.

  Subway System

The city’s subway system comprises six operational lines (1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 7 – line 3 and 7 have yet to be completed) with nearly 100 stations. Line 6 is still under construction.

There are 31, 22, 27, 21 and 11 stations on Line 1 (Tajrish-Kahrizak), Line 2 (Farhangsara-Sadeqiyeh), Line 3 (Qaem-Azadegan), Line 4 (Kolahdouz-Eram Sabz), and Line 5 (Sadeqiyeh-Karaj, Golshahr), respectively.

In June 2016, the Tehran Urban and Suburban Railway Company announced that Line 6 will be completed by September 2017. Reports say 6,850 workers are working on the line which has 27 stations along the 35 km route. It starts from Sulqan in northwestern Tehran and ends at Dolat-Abad neighborhood in the southeast.

The time interval between trains is not the same for all metro lines. While minimum time interval between trains on Line 1 (Kahrizak-Tajrish) is around two minutes, it is longer for Line 3 (more than 10 minutes). On holidays, people have to wait for more than 15 minutes for a train on Line 3.

 According to CEO of Tehran Metro Mohammad Ahmadi Bafandeh, each metro train has the capacity for 2,250 passengers.

 “This can help prevent 1,125 private cars (each with two passengers) from plying the capital’s almost always clogged streets” during peak commuting hours.  

The subway carries more than 3 million passengers a day. Ticket price is fixed for each journey, regardless of the distance traveled, but using prepaid tickets (in the form of electronic cards) costs much less. On all Tehran metro trains the first, second and the last carriages are reserved for women. Train services start at 5:30 am and run until 11 pm with one every 2-10 minutes.