Parking in Tehran

In Tehran, there are many shopping centers, bazaars, food markets and shops. The builders of above shopping malls, bazaars don't care where you're going to park your car. I mean, they only build the building man, why should they care if you don't find a place to park ? They're not responsible for that you know ...

The municipality of Tehran on the other hand makes about 500 parking places per year, while there are around 100 to 200 thousand cars added to the number of cars in Tehran. Way to go Tehran Municipality !

The result is a lot of traffic, and no parking spots. The signs of no parking and no stopping (double red cross with blue background) are rarely followed, with people parking anywhere they could find. A few rules exist for parking:

a) no parking in front of garage doors, otherwise you get flat tyre(s)
b) no parking in front of taxi stopping areas
c) no parking in buss stops
d) no parking in front of embassies

While almost no parking is built by the municipality, the central metro station, and some shopping centers (Shahrvand) provide few parking spots. However, they take no responsibility over theft of items inside or outside of the car, or even the whole car !

The municipality has thought long and hard and has brought us the greates invention in car parking since the last ice age: Parking on the side of the roads !
While 3 years ago you could park on the road side, now you can do the same, but pay for it !
All thanks to the municipality or the metropolitan police, there are people dressed in blue shirts and black pants holding tickets (the ones you get from traffic police) and some other papers. Once you find a free parking spot and park your car, you then have to waste 5 minutes searching for one of these people. You then have to pay about 150 toman for 30 minutes, up to 600 toman ($0.70) for 2 hours parking. You are given a piece of paper with your car's registration number and colour info written on it and you have to put it in your car behind under the wind shield. God forbid you come 2 minutes late, and the bastard is going to fine you a nice 7000 toman ($9) fine for ILLEGAL parking. You've paid 600 toman, AND you have to pay 7000 toman, all thanks to some bright spark who thought of the original idea: why build more parkign spaces, we can just charge for the current ones.

My advice: Go find a spot in an alley or smaller street where there are no ParkBan men (as they're called).

Next, I will write about survival guide to driving in this city.