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Traffic within the Ministry of Interior is responsible for the plan approval. After the approval the plan
is submitted to the municipality for implementation and the responsible department within the
municipality assigns companies or public transport service contractors to implement the plan (Arndt
and Döge, 2013).
Public Transport is mainly organized by the municipality in Tehran and the Traffic and Public
Transport Office reports directly to the Mayor. There is, however, a growing proportion of operations
and maintenance being outsourced to the private sector. As much as 40% of public transport
operations (excluding taxis) are run by the private sector (Allen, 2013).
5.5.6. Infrastructure financing
In recent years, and especially in order to improve the quality of service, accessibility and efficiency
of the public transport services, Tehran Municipality has taken important steps to attract private
sector partnership into operating public transport services in Tehran. This has been especially applied
to bus services. This partnership provides the system with newer vehicles provided by private
companies and a higher quality of services than might have been achieved in the same timeframe by
public only operators. In 2006, there were only 724 privately operated buses compared to some 6,676
public ones (Allen, 2013).
The high capacity, high speed BRT lines are mainly operated by the public sector while the regional
and local bus services increasingly by the private sector. In less than 3 years, the total share of private
sector in annual trips reached to more than forty% (Allen, 2013).
In addition, there are some 80,000 taxis in Tehran and over the past few years around half have
changed ownership to be privately owned. These are differentiated by colour; green for those owned
by private companies and yellow for those privately owned, by the driver (Allen, 2013).
5.5.7. Health
Since the late nineties, the extreme traffic congestion and the associated high levels of air pollution
have gradually become a major challenge from the city’s authorities. In Tehran, air quality becomes
worse at certain times of the year as the city is surrounded by mountains causing temperature
inversions and that trap the pollution over the city. During that period, motorized traffic is estimated
to be responsible for 80% of the air pollution. In addition, daily admissions due to stable angia were
significantly related to the CO levels. It was estimated that each unit increase in the CO level increase
the number of hospital admissions my one person. In 2003 the National Institute for Tuberculosis and
Lung Disease estimated that roughly 4,000 deaths per year could be attributed to Tehran’s particulate
matter alone (Arndt and Döge, 2013; Hosseinpoor et al, 2005).
The government passed the Clean Air Act in 1995 in order to address the problem of pollution in
Tehran and other large cities in the country. In addition, a 10 year air pollution mitigation masterplan
was developed and put into practice in 2000. The studies that led to the creation of the masterplan
were co funded by the national government, the United Nations Development Programme and the
Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA). The masterplan included improvements in vehicle and
fuel technology which were neglected due to the historically low process of fuel, introduction of
standards in production, circulation, and registration of vehicles, discarding and replacing of vehicles,
improving the quality of fuels and adoption of alternatives, integration with public transport planning
and traffic management, and training and promotion of public awareness. The masterplan was at first
implemented slowly as institutional, management, regulatory, enforcement and financial problems
delayed the effectiveness of the adopted measures.
5.5.8. Social exclusion
Access inequality in Tehran results mainly from the lack of appropriate land use planning for low
income households. The urban poor have been neglected and marginalised in the urban development