11% Decline in Norouz Road Trips

During the extended Norouz holidays (March 16-April 6), more than 7.37 million passengers took to public road transportation to make 705,173 trips, Iran Road Maintenance and Transportation Organization reported.  
The number of road trips saw a decrease of 11% compared with the year before, which can be linked to widespread flooding in large areas of the country.
The provinces of Tehran, Khorasan Razavi and Isfahan were top destinations of road travelers during the holidays, followed by Khuzestan, Mazandaran, Gilan, Fars, East Azarbaijan, West Azarbaijan, Hamedan and Lorestan. 
Up to 1.05 million people crossed Iran’s land borders, of whom 520,797 or 49.3% were inbound and 535,646 or 50.7% were outbound passengers. 
Astara border in the northern Gilan Province, which lies on the border with Azerbaijan Republic, Ilam Province’s Mehran located near Iran’s western border with Iraq, Ardabil Province’s Bileh Savar border crossing with Azerbaijan Republic, Khorasan Razavi’s Doqaroon on the Iran-Afghanistan border and Iran-Iraq Shalamcheh border in Khuzestan Province were the busiest border crossings during Norouz.
The recent flooding that swept across vast areas of the country left at least 70 people dead and inflicted hundreds of millions of dollars in losses to homes, roads and agriculture. Many road travelers were caught in floodwaters or landslide during days of heavy raining.