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Europe Plans To Ban Petrol Cars From Cities By 2050
thecarchik writes "Can you imagine a future — thirty-nine years from now — where there are no engines humming, no exhaust smells, no car sounds of any kind in the city except the presumably Jetsons-like beeping of EVs? The European Commission can, and it has a transportation proposal aiming to do just that by 2050. Paris was the first city to suggest a ban on gas guzzlers in their city core, but this ban takes it to whole different level by planning to phase out all petrol cars completely from the city streets. While Paris was motivated by reduced pollution, the EU has broader aims of reduced foreign oil dependence, reduced greenhouse gas emissions, increased jobs within the EU, and improved infrastructure for future economic growth."
If we are truly at peak oil petrol will probably be too expensive by then to use in the average vehicle by then anyway.
39 years away is a LONG time. Many politicians will have a chance to overturn this during that time.
Or if you're an optimist, perhaps the free market will have beat them to the punch by then. Or you might point out that there already is a modern city without petrol cars.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
Might be worth nothing that the UK has already rejected this idea.
Murphey's fighting Occam, and we're in the stands.
The UK government has already said they don't like the plan. From the BBC UK rejects EU call for city centre ban on petrol cars:
It's certainly an interesting idea. And it seems, using the example of London's congestion charge, that it wouldn't be a bad thing. I certainly encourage more people to use public transport, and ride bikes.
And for the Yanks who will complain they live in the suburbs, maybe lobby your local government for better public transport? And stop complaining, this is an article from Europe.
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It's easier to replace 2 coal power plants than 100k privately owned cars.
Where do all these electric cars get their power from? It's okay to pollute wherever the power plants are built, just as long as it's not in the city limits, eh?
If people insist on polluting, then having the pollution in one place, away from large numbers of people, where it can be more easily managed (reduced), sounds good to me.
I wish the West End, City and East End of London would be pedestrianised.
I have to admit, I'm struggling to understand what exactly defies physics about banning petrol cars or even economics for that matter with the growing costs of oil and the decreasing volumes of it available on the planet.
"Europe should spend money on basic research, experimenting with new ideas and taxing petrol if different forms of transportation are desired."
Yeah, it does all that too.
Where do all these electric cars get their power from? It's okay to pollute wherever the power plants are built, just as long as it's not in the city limits, eh?
It isn't China or the States. There is MUCH more green and nuclear energy in the Europe.
You are short and narrow sighted. Europe doesn't make a decision like this just because of what they expect to change, but because of what they expect to have. By 2050 a lot of projects concerning green energy will have bore fruit and it won't be the same concern as it is today. You're only seeing 2050, while stuck in 2011, try to put it all together and form the big picture of 2050.
Outraged! Outraged, I say! Wait...Europe? 2050? I don't live there. Oh, and I'll be dead. Well then, carry on!
dull-eyed footstool-temporary octopus
Yeah, 2000 is pretty much 1960.
With microwave ovens. ...etc
And teflon kitchenware.
And mobile phones
And digital cameras
And the world wide web
And slashdot
With commonly distributed measles vaccine
And mass-produced insulin
And VCR's & DVR's
And The Pill (approved in 1960)
And barcodes
With some understanding of genetics & proteomics
Having found Cosmic microwave background radiation (aka confirming the big bang)
Really, 2000 is pretty much 1960 indeed!
I bet the changes in 40 years will be similarly... unimpressive.
There's a lot of this going on in Europe and to a lesser extent, N. America. Make a commitment, but put it so far off into the future that you can take credit for being "green" or visionary without having to actually do anything or make any hard choices. If the technology works out, you get to take credit for it. If the technology fails, then it's some other person who gets to repeal the law, but you'll be long gone by then.
Good stewardship of our natural resources is a good thing, but the problem with environmentalism is it has become a movement which can do no wrong and knows no self-criticism. Any inconvenience or failure is either a misunderstanding (stupid people), or poor implementation (the people are too stupid to to it right, so we have to make it simpler). So the EU will go on mandating Ethanol-based fuel additives which deplete the rain forests, energy-saving lightbulbs, which contain mercury and need to be properly disposed of, etc.
Forced abortions? Forced vasectomy for all men? (Maybe forced castration, that would probably also reduce the number of wars, and definitely reduce the number of rapes.)Or maybe just don't provide government support to anyone with a child, enabling only the rich to reproduce, and producing more property "crime" as the poor have to steal to support their families.
Consider all the other option, Voluntary measures.
Personally, I think simply raising the living standard of everyone will be far better. Demonstrated fact that countries with higher living standards have lower birthrates.
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Where do all these electric cars get their power from? It's okay to pollute wherever the power plants are built, just as long as it's not in the city limits, eh?
Why do the power plants need to be polluting? This proposal does come from the continent that leads the way on alternative energy sources like wind, solar and nuclear power.
. I do it because it's less not fun than taking public transportation.
Well, then we'll change that, one way or the other.
So either you make it so that I don't have to go to work that far away or you shut the fuck up about how I get there.
Fine, I'll pick option 1, and I'll do it by making it impossible for people to commute that far. Then the free market will sort it out - companies will move to where there are people living, or affordable housing will be built closer to where there is work, or whatever.
And no, getting another job somewhere else is not an option. Changing my profession is not an option. Sacrificing what little comfort in life I have for your stupid ideas is NOT a FUCKING OPTION!
Pfft. Typical whiney driver. If you're actually so close to the poverty line that you can't afford the taxes, maybe you'd be better off on welfare. Otherwise, quit your bitching.
People should stop expecting everyone else to bend over backwards for their nutcase ideas.
Exactly backwards; you're making the world worse for everyone else for the sake of your own personal comfort.
What you are doing now is telling the nigger-slave to work harder or else he gets the whip.
Actually it's very much like telling the overseer to stop using slave labour. If you look at what slaveowners were writing you'll find very similar complaints to your own - "I can't afford machines or paid labour. Changing the way I farm is not an option, changing professions is not an option. Either make it so I don't have to harvest or shut the fuck up about how I do it."
I am trolling
It's a lot easier to control the pollution at one large power plant than tens of millions of tiny ones.
Additionally, electricity acts as an abstraction layer. If there were a breakthrough in fusion generation, the EV fleet wouldn't have to change, in fact nothing would have to change, merely by putting the new fusion station on the grid, the entire fleet becomes a lot less polluting.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
What are you talking about?
Even though Europe is quite far in the north, its climate is perfect for agriculture thanks to the Gulf Stream.
It is actually one of the most agriculturally privileged regions in the world, which is one of the reasons for its important role in the development of civilization and culture (if you don't have to worry too much about having enough to eat you can spend your time on making life easier and more enjoyable in other ways).
Seriously, how is it a stretch to imagine a future where the primary source of energy is not derived from burning dead dinosaurs and plants?
Dont get me wrong, I love my Jeep! It is a hobby for me, but I certainly do not expect it will be my primary mode of transport in 20+ year. At least I hope to god we would have progressed a bit faster than that.
The move off fossil fuels is just like anything else that's hard; if you don't start at some point, you will never get there.
True. And you can extend the reach, speed and comfort of a bicycle by help of a small electric engine-and-battery. Because bicycles are amazingly energy-effective. On level ground, a bicycle needs aproximately 40 wh (or 0.04Kwh) of energy for each mile traveled.
A modern lithium-ion battery holds 300-600wh/litre, thus a 3-litre battery weighing around 10kg, holds sufficient energy to propel bike and rider over aproximately 35 miles. If you use the battery merely as "support", doing most of the pedaling yourself, but letting it help out with the trickier parts, that range gets even better.
In your fantasy they were.
The first five year plan, 1928-1933, was the collectivization of agriculture in order to promote a headlong rush to industrialization. It ended in a famine in which millions starved.
The twelfth plan, 1986-1990, was intended to accelerate economic development, which was lagging disastrously after the second through eleventh plans. It ended in an economic crisis so profound and pervasive that it led to the failure of the Soviet system and a breakup of the Soviet Union.
In between, there was mostly persecution, misery, national alcoholism, a sense of hopelessness, and periods of vast premature loss of life. If that is you definition of successful, then yes, the plans were were successful.
"Pedestrianised" - where will the bikes and buses go then? Walking is not a replacement for either of these, for distances over a mile.
I mean to change [almost] all the white roads on this map: restrict them to pedestrian and cyclists (and similarly for the City and the East End). Or, just change them so there are no through routes for car-sized vehicles, i.e. by blocking roads with bollards wide enough to let a bicycle pass (but I think signs and a little enforcement should be sufficient).
It would be a much nicer place to be at all times of the day.
I am pretty sure Venice should be counted as "modern" and it is not just "petrol car" free but totally car free :-)
It's entirely possible to ban petrol cars from cities.
Thousands of towns and cities in Europe have car-free areas in their centre, sometimes just a couple of streets, sometimes the whole city centre. A few charge cars to drive in/near the centre. Some ban highly-polluting vehicles (LEZs, e.g. for Greater London).
As a result of our high prices, we drive more efficient vehicles. Very roughly, we use half as much fuel per km as North Americans. In fact, we do not pay an awful lot more per passenger km than they do, and I would argue that our vehicles are generally safer and better engineered - in the US, safety often means just adding mass and padding.
Thus we have a double insulation against fuel cost uncertainty; there is capacity for the Government to reduce taxation in a fuel price shock to maintain economic stability, and we use less of it anyway and so are less exposed. The policy has succeeded; Europe doesn't have exurbs with collapsed property values, and we have a much smaller park of uneconomic passenger trucks which represent a future drain on the US economy.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
At first I thought that doing this by 2050 sounded way too long. Then I realised, the technology to make it possible will take 20 years, but the rest of the time will be to get enough people to actually realise that banging a metal block up and down inside a closed space by exploding a volatile chemical is really a very poor idea for obtaining motive power indeed. This methodology has had its day, time to move on.
It's normal for these areas to be open to delivery vehicles at a specific time (e.g. at night, before 9, whatever).
Westminster already has a policy for HGV loading times. Traffic congestion in London encourages deliveries at night at the moment anyway.
This really isn't anything new: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedestrian_zone
London is one of very few cities I've been in (as a resident or visitor) without a significant car-free area, relative to its size.
It's the old "you're just shifting emissions from tailpipe to powerplant" myth:
In the EU today:
France 85% from Nuclear
UK 25% from Nuclear/Renewables/Hydro
Germany 25% Nuclear and renewable combined
Austria 70% renewable
For the future the EU has a target of 20% renewable energy by 2020, and something like 80% or 90% by 2050. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy_in_the_European_Union
This describes EVs running on the UK's current electricity generation mix in comparison with small, fuel efficient petrol cars:
"If we look only at the three smallest categories of conventional car, average exhaust pipe emissions from new cars in 2009 were about 130g CO2/km. Emissions from producing the fuel (extracting and refining the oil) typically adds another 10% to 18% on top, bringing the total for new small cars in 2009 to 145155g CO2/km. Based on these figures, electric cars currently emit about a third less carbon on average than small conventional cars."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/electric-vision/electricity-supply-fossil-fuels
Pre-canned Evolution Links for all those Slashdot holy wars.
Nearly all of the world's population growth is in developing nations. Europe right now is very close to zero population growth, and is expected to go negative into population decline before 2050.
"...mostly persecution, misery, national alcoholism, a sense of hopelessness, and periods of vast premature loss of life."
Welcome to Scotland!
C-x C-s C-x k
NO, I am picturing Jeffrey Immelt getting a job working for the Obama Administration after betting GE's future on "green" technology.
If it is really better lighting, why do people need to be pushed towards it? Won't they adopt it as they become convinced that it is better? Further, how do you know it is better for all situations?
This basically comes down to some people thinking they know what is best for other people and using the power of government to force those people to behave according to their wishes. What happens when people who think they know what's best decide to force you to do something you don't want to do?
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
No, I cannot imagine cities without cars by 2050. I think it is very unlikely that will happen.
Much more likely is Europe without a European Commission by 2050. These bureaucrats make themselves so incredibly impossible that whatever is happening in the middle-East right now, will also happen to the Bureaucrats in Brussels. My prediction is 2025 at the latest..
To Terminate, or not to Terminate, that's the question - SCSIROB
The internal combustion engine was and for the near future still is the most economically viable, everyday practical and most lightweight means of generating motive power for cars and motorcycles.
That may change within the next 20 years or so, in fact I personally hope it changes withing the next 5 or 10, so we can use what oil we have left for things we have yet to develop alternatives for.
Electric power is close, but it's still not quite there for everyday usage. For a lot of people it's perfectly fine and the percentage will grow larger as battery tech and electric drivetrains are developed further. But for some things, motorcycles in particular, electric power is simply too heavy and too cumbersome to "refuel". For now.
Eat the rich.