3,300 Old Buses

A staggering 3,300 old buses ply the packed and polluted streets of Tehran, doing little to alleviate the city’s air pollution problem. “There are 6,600 buses in Tehran, around half of which are way past their service life,” Eqbal Shakeri, chairman of the Tehran City Council Construction Commission, told YJC. He blamed the problem on the city’s failure to gradually upgrade the aging bus fleet. Shakeri said the current fleet cannot meet demand, adding that in addition to replacing the old buses, Tehran needs to also add 5,000 new buses to its fleet.