DETERMINING THE ECOLOGICAL FOOTPRINT OF VEHICLES IN TEHRAN, IRAN

Inefficient transport system in big cities such as Tehran causes major environmental problems like increasing fuel consumption, which results in the loss of large amounts of non-renewable natural resources. Increased fuel consumption in Tehran is mainly due to lack of an integrated and efficient transport system, which is one of the main causes of the decline in the country's environmental resources. The aim of this paper is to estimate the ecological footprint of energy in the transportation system within city of Tehran and also estimate the ecological footprint for each of the vehicles per passenger. Finally, some suggestions for improving the sustainability of the transportation system in Tehran will be made. To achieve this goal, the amount of fuel consumption in the transportation sector within city of Tehran was prepared and, based on the carbon release from any type of fuels, energy footprint in 2012 was estimated. Also, fuel consumption per passenger of vehicles was calculated and the ecological footprint per passenger for any type of vehicles was calculated using the ecological footprint model. The results showed that the ecological footprint of energy in the transportation sector in Tehran was 4,384,777.5 gha in 2012, while the total forest land in city of Tehran was equal to 7670.5 ha. So, this ecological deficit showed an unsustainable transport system in Tehran. The results also demonstrated that the subway system, with 0.002 m(2) per passenger, had minimum ecological footprint and private cars with 1.612 m(2) per passenger had the highest ecological footprint. This means that each passenger of a private vehicle has footprints equal to 806 times of a subway passenger.