Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo wants to make Paris a diesel-free city by 2020. The first step, she said on Wednesday, will be to ban the “most polluting” diesel delivery trucks and buses by July 2015, reports FRANCE 24.
And from July 2016, Hidalgo wants the ban to be extended to all vehicles over a fixed emission level (precisely what this level is remains unclear).
In an interview with left-leaning daily Le Monde on Wednesday, Hidalgo said Paris wanted to “follow the example of 200 European cities” that have created low-emission zones.
“We are determined to act quickly,” Paris’s socialist mayor told Le Monde. “The fine particles [from diesel fumes and responsible for around 42,000 deaths a year in France] emitted mostly by public buses and coaches are a major health concern.”
“It is true that older diesel vehicles are more polluting than modern ones,” she said. “But the filters in even the latest models can’t get rid of the most dangerous fine particles.”
July’s first implementation of the ban, she said, would cover the whole of the city within (but not including) the périphérique ring road that separates the City of Lights from the outlying “banlieues”, or suburbs.
The move will not be “overly punitive” against city businesses and the delivery companies whose vehicles line the streets of Paris in the early hours of each morning, she insisted, adding that “there will be significant financial incentives for these business to invest in less polluting vehicles”.
“This will include up to 50 percent of the cost price, with low-rate loans to cover the rest,” she said.
“We are already in talks with banks and shops as well as transport companies to get this in place.”