Tehran Monorail

The Tehran Monorail was a project to construct a monorail in the Iranian capital Tehran. The project was cancelled in April 2010, with only 3% completed.

The concept of constructing a monorail in Iran was first proposed in 1976 before the Iranian Revolution. Then the mayor of Tehran, Shahrestani, eventually scrapped the project after repeated specialist consultations indicated that a monorail network would not ease traffic in the city in a significant fashion. At the time the general conclusion was that it would create more problems than solutions.

In 2002, Tehran Mayor Mahmoud Ahmadinejad declared his intent to develop a monorail system for the capital despite the numerous warnings by transport and traffic experts. The monorail project was expected to cost 135 million Euros for 12 km and three stations.

The largest criticism of the project lay in its heavy costs on the already cash strapped Tehran City. Furthermore, a large part of criticism is directed towards the plan's geographical mapping. According to those who have had access to the initial sketch, the selected route is less crowded, making the project, in their view, unjustifiable. Among opponents of the Monorail plan was Ali-Asghar Ardakanian, a member of the Transport Engineering Society who believed that Iran lacked the pre-requisite skills and knowledge to maintain and run the system. Ardakanian also insisted that the government plan was poorly thought out and failed to take into account the affiliated expenses for maintaining the monorail's underground and surface structures — thus creating funding forecast problems for the future. Additionally, relative to cost, critics point out that the passenger capacity of the monorail is 10 times less than the Tehran Metro.

Supporters of the Tehran Monorail were commonly heard declaring that the development of the project would be significantly faster than other transport project due to its nature.

Despite the overwhelming criticism of the project, a project to build the first phase officially began on March 17, 2004. Phase One comprises a 6 km line with six stations. Sadeghieh Square, Tehran Metro (Green line), Apadana Complex, Tehran West Bus depot, Azadi Square, Mehrabad Airport. Phase Two will include a loop back to Sadeghieh through Akbatan Apartment complex, and expand the line to 12 km.

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