Environmental Impact Assessment of Electric Public Transportation System Development in Tehran city

The environmental sustainability is a requirement for modern urban transportation systems. Selecting the appropriate option for the public transport in any urban system does not lead only to the sustainable urban transportation development, but will adapt planning process to its people's characteristics and encourage the people to use it by increasing its productivity. Therefore, this study aims to assess the environmental effect of developing an electric public transport system in Tehran.

In this study, after obtaining the documented and published data, including (books, transportation articles, and obtaining transportation statistics of Tehran from the bus companies and Municipal Transportation and Traffic Organization), AHP-TOPSSIS method was used to select the best option for developing the public transportation in Tehran.

The results showed that the option of implementing an electric transportation system with the private sector investment and government facilities (0.5798), using the electric transport systems in city center (0.3972), converting BRTs to electricity (0.2886), and non - implementation option (0.2672), respectively, had the highest and lowest priority among the development methods of public transport systems in Tehran.

To eliminate the use of fossil fuels in near distant future to prevent the climate change and eliminate environmental pollution from fossil fuels, Tehran's urban transportation system should be implemented to eliminate the fossil fuels, develop and transform its fleet into the electrical systems