TEHRAN – There are currently 22,000 buses running in the country’s transport fleet, 15,000 of which will turn over 10 years old by the end of this year (March 2020), Hossein Rajab Salahi, an official with the Ministry of Interior has said.

Moreover, the country’s current taxi fleet consists of 320,000 taxis, 190,000 of which will age above 10 years by the next 6 months and considered old, he stated, YJC reported on Tuesday.

Referring to the renovation of clunker taxis, he noted that replacing the old taxis with newer ones is a cross sectoral measure which must be done by the government and car manufacturing companies.

He went on to say that due to economic sanctions, renovation of public transport fleet has faced serious troubles.

Regretting that some 15,000 buses will also reach ages above 10 years by the end of this year, he said that sanctions made it difficult to import new buses, “However, we managed to get $142,000 subsidies for each bus running on gas and some $67,000 subsidies for buses running on diesel.”

Elsewhere in his remarks, Rajab Salahi said that the underground transport system stretching to 170 kilometers in the metropolis of Tehran is delivering over 2.7 million rides each day.

“Once lines 6 and 7 are completed, we can increase the metro ridership to some seven millions a day,” he highlighted.

Construction of 299 kilometers of subway lines is underway in metropolitan areas, which will expand the total operational metro lines in the country to 840 kilometers, leading the number of annual metro trips to exceed 2.3 million, he concluded.

Clunker cars, produce great deal of emission and cause air pollution especially in metropolises like Tehran. According to the Air Quality Control Company, 24 days of unhealthy for sensitive groups due to ozone pollution and particulate matter haunted Tehran, in addition, air quality reached a level which was unhealthy for all the residents for 1 day.

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