Tehran and Sofia are looking forward to expand public transportation

In the meeting between the Chairman of the Islamic Council of Tehran and the mayor of Sofia, both officials pointed to the traffic problem in their cities and considered the expansion of public transportation as the only way to deal with this problem and emphasized on bilateral cooperation in this field.

Mehdi Chamran, the Chairman of the Islamic Council of Tehran, and Yordanka Fandakova, the mayor of Sofia, Bulgaria, met each other in line with urban diplomacy exchanges.

While thanking the chairman for the invitation, Fandakova said: We have a good relationship with the Iranian ambassador in Bulgaria and he told us about the beauties of Iran and Tehran.

In this regard, he mentioned that Sofia is a beautiful city, but in terms of population, it is smaller than Tehran and has only one and a half million people, and added: We will be happy to use your experiences in the field of cultural heritage, environment and traffic control.

Mehdi Chamran welcomed him and said: "Tehran is a big and populous city, which is also considered the largest and most populous city in the Middle East, which is about seven thousand years old, but it has been chosen as the capital of Iran for about two hundred years and In the past It was a small and sparsely populated city.

He went on to point out that such a city usually has many problems, but in addition to these problems, it also has facilities and capacities, and explained: Tehran city administration is a very difficult and complex task, and Tehran Municipality works independently, It does not receive a budget from the government and the council imposes fees and the municipality manages itself and the city through these fees. Therefore, despite the American sanctions, Tehran Municipality was able to make very good moves, which include many highways, bridges and buildings in different parts of the city. Also, we made and used many items that we could not buy in the country.

He further mentioned other challenges of Tehran.

In response, the mayor of Sofia said: From your words, I realized that our cities have similar challenges and the methods to solve these problems are also similar.

He added: "Since one of the causes of air pollution is traffic, we are trying to reduce traffic and our main goal is to make people use public transportation instead of private cars."

Mentioning that their main project is the expansion of the subway, he continued: We also invested a lot in public transportation and at the same time we are looking for a ban on parking in the city, and currently there is only two hours of parking time. People have to pay for that.

Also, due to the difficulty of financing, Sofia Municipality is looking for the creation of new boulevards and buildings and the provision of public transportation with the help of the European Union.

Fandakova noted: Our city council has control and influence over all these changes. Of course, we always have financing problems, so we have to prioritize programs.

At the end, the mayor of Sofia presented one of the handicrafts of Bulgaria to the chairman and said: You can see how close the cultures of Iran and Bulgaria are.