Management barriers for the provision of common utility tunnels in Tehran city

Increasing population growth and urban development as one of the most important realities of today's life requires the provision of a variety of services, facilities and more urban infrastructure for citizens. As a result of the increasing population and development of urban environments, capacity reduction or early depreciation of infrastructure is considered as one of the greatest challenges of urban management. In large cities, there are wide networks of facilities such as water, electricity, gas, telecommunications and sewage, the construction, renovation and repair operations, in addition to financial costs for drilling operations, traffic and environmental problems of which make the city look undesirable. Therefore, in order to deal with the challenges of transferring vital facilities of big cities, as well as increasing safety, efficiency and longevity, the use of common utility tunnels of urban facilities has been proposed as a solution for mayors and city managers. These tunnels are a huge structure for integrating important facilities such as electrical grids, telecommunications, water, sewage and gas pipes. Despite the large number of streets and highways, many cities in Iran are not equipped with a common utility tunnel, due to its main technical, operational and financial constraints. The purpose of this study is to identify the management barriers for the implementation of a common utility tunnel using a method of analyzing them in Tehran at five stages that are policy and decision making, planning and design, financing, implementation, operation and maintenance. The results of the research by using qualitative research of thematic analysis of 22 semi-structured interviews data based on MAXQDA software showed that the main obstacles identified in the policy and decision making and planning and design stages which strongly influence other stages.