August 08, 2014
Traffic was at a standstill on the highways leaving the capital last Tuesday and Wednesday as Tehranis deserted the city in droves for the five-day Eid-e Fitr holiday.
Iranian Traffic Police Chief Eskandar Momeni announced Saturday that the 78 million Iranians took 62,162,000 trips during the holiday, though he didn’t explain how that number could be calculated.
He told reporters more trips were taken last week than during the Now Ruz holiday.
He said cameras on the highways exiting the capital showed that one-third of the travelers were headed to the provinces of Gilan and Mazandaran on the Caspian coast and Alborz, to the west of Tehran.
The main goal seemed to be to swim in the Caspian. Iran’s Legal Medicine Organization reported that 26 people drowned swimming at unguarded Caspian beaches during the five-day holiday.
The state gasoline distribution company reported that consumption was at an all-time high of 80 million liters a day for the five days of the holiday, well above the normal consumption rate of about 65 million liters.
Police Chief Momeni said that when the holidays began, travelers were stuck in very heavy traffic, such that in some instances, what would normally have been a three-hour drive, took more than 10 hours.
Momeni said the return trips were distributed over more time, and this led to a better flow of traffic and less traffic congestion.
The traffic police chief also suggested that the government and Majlis regulate holidays so there are no longer such surges in highway traffic. He didn’t explain how that could be done.
Momeni urged that construction of the Tehran-North Freeway be expedited. That highway will punch tunnels through the Alborz Mountains and vastly shorten the trip to the Caspian resorts. The freeway was started under the Shah and canceled after the revolution as one of the monarch’s “wasteful prestige projects.”
It was re-started in the 1990s and billed as a highway to promote trade with the former Soviet Union, although it still goes first to the Caspian resorts. The construction effort has been plagued with delays and budget problems. The freeway will have 145 tunnels along its length of 121 kilometers (75 miles).
