Paris to ban old cars (Diesel owners take note)

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http://www.drive.com.au/motor-news/p...12-13d0l4.html

It seems the city of love has called time on the humble car. Or at least those built in the 1990s.

Officials in Paris are set to enforce a blanket ban on heavy polluting vehicles in the coming months, in what's being described as a radical attempt to quell the city's pollution problem.

Autocar in the UK reports that a series of rolling restrictions are expected to begin this summer, when all coaches, buses and trucks registered before September 30, 2001, will be banned from central Paris. Those vehicles will still be able to access the Boulevard Perpherique, the giant ring road that encircles the city centre.

For car owners, passenger vehicles registered before December 31, 1996, will be banned while a September 30, 1997, mandate will be enforced for vans and light trucks.

According to French reports, the restrictions will gradually become tighter up until 2020, when the only private vehicles with unrestricted access into the city centre will reportedly be cars registered after 2011 and motorcycles registered after July 2015.

Daily smog has become so bad in the French capital that, last year, officials began imposing alternate driving days for motorists – depending on whether they had odd or even-numbered licence plates. Paris officials have also offered incentives for public transport and car pooling in the past.

The restrictions appear largely aimed at diesel vehicles, with the French government wanting to gradually phase out diesel-powered passenger vehicles. As it stands, roughly 80 per cent of French motorists drive diesel-powered cars.

"In France, we have long favoured the diesel engine. This was a mistake, and we will progressively undo that, intelligently and pragmatically," the country's Prime Minister Manuel Valls said in December.

According to one report this week, Parisian mayor Anne Hidalgo was quoted as saying that while the older diesel cars were the most polluting, "even the filters in the latest models can't get rid of the most dangerous fine particles".

The French government is said to be adding to the push against diesel by raising the tax on diesel fuel, as well as deliberating over whether to hand out incentives for citizens who swap out of diesel-powered vehicles into electric or petrol-powered vehicles - a scheme that could bolster the country's local car manufacturing industry.

Similar anti-diesel sentiments are being expressed in other European cities including London, because of the health warnings about high levels of nitrogen oxides and fine particles generated by diesel-powered vehicles.

The Parisian restrictions come as the Europe Union clamps down on Euro 6 emissions standards introduced in September last year. Australian authorities are said to be considerably behind the eight-ball in enforcing such measures.

According to The Carbon Dioxide Emissions from New Australian Vehicles 2013 paper released last year, the emission average for the Australian vehicle fleet has fallen nearly 10 years behind equivalent European measures.

Despite the fleet average in carbon emissions falling 3.4 per cent in 2013 – down from 198.5 to 192g/km – Australian standards still pale against the European Union's fleet average of 158.7g/km C02 in 2007.