A Tehran city councilor voiced his opposition to the import of secondhand buses, which has been proposed as an option to renovate the aging transportation fleet in the capital.
During a meeting held on Sunday, Mohammad Alikhani, the head of Transport Commission in Tehran City Council, said secondhand buses will only add to the air pollution problems choking the metropolis, Tasnim News Agency reported.
“Officials should widen their horizon and make efforts to equip the public transport fleet with electric buses,” he added.
“There are domestic and foreign companies ready to help realize this goal."
Alikhani further said neither scenarios are on the agenda yet, but the authorities should not prioritize tactless solutions.
Experts believe that the expanding metropolis needs 10,000 buses to offer decent commuting to residents in the capital that is home to 12 million people.
This is while Tehran's public transportation fleet has 6,000 buses, half of which is 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 Monday, the US dollar was traded at 139,500 rials in Tehran. In March 2018, it hardly fetched 42,000 rials.
TBC is mulling its options with the officials of Industries Ministry that is in charge of vehicle imports.
Sanandaji says buses under five years of age are much cleaner than the smog-inducing clunkers currently plying the streets of Tehran.
Day by day, the smog inducing buses spew more toxins into the capital's air and pollute the environment. No matter what solution is adopted to curb the issue, some effective measures must be taken soon, otherwise things could take a turn for the worse.
