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Paris Bans Half of All Cars On the Road
cartechboy writes "Pollution is becoming a very large issue in major cities due to the amount of vehicles on the road. To try and help this issue Paris just banned all vehicles on alternate odd and even license plates today and tomorrow. Of course, electric cars and hybrids are exempt from the new restrictions as they aren't part of the problem, rather they are seen as part of the solution. Naturally taxis, buses, emergency vehicles, and cars carrying three or more passengers (hooray for carpooling) are also exempt. High levels of particulate matter are blamed for all the various respiratory diseases, while higher oxides of nitrogen are a primary cause of smog. We'd have to say that this ban probably won't be the last one as traffic levels increase over time."
Time for an extra set of plates...
honestly that was the most shocking thing i've read in the last few days
the way the europeans talk they live in ancient cities where smiling people happily bike, walk or take the train everywhere on thousand year old streets and the $8 a gallon gas makes life awesome
except in evil USA where we suck up the world's resources driving everywhere
The found that people bought cheap older, less environment-friendly second vehicles so they could bypass the restrictions, making the problem worse.
Karma: Can only be portioned out by the Cosmos.
So what happens when it's my day to drive the carpool, and I need to go pick up everyone? I'm the only person in the car when I set out.
The traffic in Paris will collapse long before smog will become a problem on most days of the year. Like most old European cities, Paris just wasn't built for cars. A traffic jam of electric cars is not going to help.
This will unfairly effect those with one car, persons with two or more cars will be likely able to circumvent this.
Carpooling will only go so far as everyone will have to get out at the same place or risk the driver receiving a ticket.
Not a new concept, still an interesting development.
But they didn't ban half of the cars, they banned half of the driving.
For years now we have heard that the high diesel emissions requirements here in the states have been preventing the direct importing of the plentiful European diesel cars. I've heard that the diesel emissions are a large contributer to this smog, particularly NOx.
Does not change my opinion that we need more diesels on the road.
In Bogota, Colombia (almost 8 millions of inhabitants) this measure is called "Pico y Placa". The natural answer from the people was buy a second car, so they will have two or more cars, some with even license plate and some with odd license plate. As a result, the number of cars nearly doubles itself making worst the solution than the original problem.
Smog and levels of particulate matter in large cities are generally a lot lower compared to before the 60s, when a lot of people still heated their houses with coal fires. Smoke / Sulphur concentrations in London for example have dropped from around 350 mg / m^3 in 1950 to around 5mg / m^3 today, and levels are still dropping owing to better filters & cleaner cars. Particulate matter in the air hasn't increased; the maximum acceptable levels have been substantially lowered.
That's a good thing, By the way. Also, Paris seems to have lifted the driving ban for tomorrow, apparently smog is down to acceptable levels already.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
The traditional internal combustion powered vehicle will be banned in all industrialized nations one way or another. In the US and Canada this will be difficult due to the great distances some must drive. But what use is a car or truck if it can only be run in rural areas? It is upon us and it must be done. That is why companies such as Tesla are so important are alternative vehicles such as bicycles. Those that think big oil can stop this had best think again.
sao paulo has a similar scheme... but only limits 20% of the cars
since i don't own a car myself, i dont know the exact mechanics, but on mondays cars with plates ending with 1 or 2 are forbidden, on tuesdays are the ones with 3 or 4, and so on
people with more money bought a second car, as happened in mexico
"life is a joke, and someone is laughing at me"
São Paulo has had car circulation restrictions based on plate number for years now (more than a decade, too lazy to check exactly when). Mon-Fri, each day a couple different numbers aren't allowed on the streets.
The streets are still clogged, still polluted as hell. Government says it improved things. I can only imagine what it would be like without this restriction, then.
morcego
Or just shoot you!
Hey, if you want to go libertarian, at least go all the way!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Were I a Parisian I would have a custom tag comprised of only letters, thus avoiding the even / odd rule. "SMOG" would be a fitting choice. (yeah yeah, I'm sure custom license plates are mainly an American thing)
Better known as 318230.
Wow, that's quite radical. I love it! They are not just "founding a committee which might some day gather to speculate about reducing pollution" but instead applying real measures. I'm not sure if this license plate rule is the best way to do it, but it's relatively effective immediately.
This isn't anything new except they now have to do it Paris. Florence (Firenze) Italy was doing this when I was there in 1997. It was pretty interesting because they even had high smog alerts (No Traffic Zones) that required people with certain license plates to actually pull off the road during high alerts on Sundays. This apparently has been expanded to other days of the week. Italy also banned many vehicles from inside the Florence. At the city gate you had to have a special sticker to get in with a car or moped. It was very difficult and expensive to get a sticker for a car.
http://www.expatsinitaly.com/n...
they've had alternate plates in Milan since the late 80s. This caused a spate of license plate theft.
Liberty - Security - Laziness - Pick any two.
Europe has far more diesels in passenger car use than is typical in the US, the particulate and Nitrogen Oxides are not nearly as much a problem for gasoline engines as diesel. While diesel gets (typically) better mileage, it comes with other costs.
My perception in having visited Paris, Barcelona, Milan, Grenoble, Firenze is that a fair amount of the road pollution comes not from cars but from Vespas and similar scooters and small-engine motorcycles. Lots of people living within these cities rely on such vehicles, and just judging from my nose, they are big contributors to smog. I realize that it's often the most economical means of getting around for students and other younger people. Also for cities that were laid out before the internal combustion engine was invented, the convenience of a Vespa is hard to overstate. But there seems to be not much interest in engineering them to be very clean.
Cars should have warning labels on them like cigarette packs.
rewriting history since 2109
You built your cities so that biking, walking or taking the train isn't an option. That's that difference.
But read again what he is saying. That despite the fact that yes, european cities are often built to be more friendly to bikes/walking/mass transit, they still have a LOT of cars. So how much did it really help to design a city to facilitate this when they still have vast pollution issues from cars?
In a small counterpoint, I'm not sure Paris is really a city that embraces bikes to the same extent places like Amsterdam or Copenhagen do... and I think you are making an overly blanket statement about U.S. cities, I don't know if you know but there are quite a few large U.S. cities where you can get around very well via mass transit or bike. I found it nearly as easy to bike around San Francisco (even with the hills!) as in Amsterdam.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Very dangerous around people fleeing paparazzi.
But nobody can make a car like the CRX, Chevy Metro, or EG-chassis Civic ever again due to safety and emissions requirements.
Don't forget also that your CRX has vastly better visibility due to safety requirements making all new vehicles mandate A and C pillars that can hold up a small steam locomotive on the roof of your car.
My wife can hardly drive any vehicle newer than about five years old now because she can't see out of any of them while driving.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
What about delivery vehicles? They normally have one driver so they don't get the three people exemption. Guess you won't be getting your food.
No Camaro is over 5000lbs, http://www.chevrolet.com/camar... They're all under 4000 for 2014. Even the 500HP monster is finally under 4000 thanks to weight reductions. Don't get me wrong, still way too heavy for a 'sports' car but not 5000 lbs. While I don't disagree that the old CRX gets amazing fuel economy, they certainly do. Fuel economy isn't everything though. The CRX probably puts more pollutants into the air than the heavy Camaro. While that may not effect your pocketbook, it certainly matters to our breathing air if everyone takes the same approach.
It's one thing to need 3+ people in a car to use the HOV lane, but how does this promote carpooling if you make ALL the roads in town illegal with 1-2 people in the car? The first guy can't go pick the other up, and at the end of the day if you're down to two passengers, you can't drop either of them off.
2014 1LS Camaro Base Curb Weight 3719 lbs http://www.chevrolet.com/camar... That's a lot of rounding up. Also MPG != emissions. Not saying a disagree on lighter cars being needed. Just use correct numbers.
This is already done in Mexico City. The net result has been to INCREASE pollution. While air quality in the city did not change at all, residents simply kept their old car when they bought another one. Now they had 2 cars and could drive every day of the week because they had different plates. As a result they kept older cars that might have been salvaged running longer, producing more pollutants over the long run and also forcing the poor that could only afford one car to be the only group in compliance with the spirit of the law. Car purchases in Mexico city sky rocketed while new car production remained stagnant, meaning people were buying older used cars. Basically this law caused Mexico city to suck in every 20 year old jalopy from every neighboring city and town just so residents could get to work on time.
There have been many studies done on this. Here's just the first that popped up in Google.
Citation:
http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~in...
Those don't cause smog in your own city, and transport represents over a quarter of all energy usage, so gotta call BS on the general "Drop in the bucket" principle you're pushing as well.
It's only true if you're ignoring both the context, and giving a lot of wiggle room for the phrase "drop in the bucket".
...would be to internalize the full cost of burning fuel into the price of the fuel, then use that revenue to pay the external cost of burning fuel. Then people would drive less and the people who get respiratory illnesses would have their health care and lost work days paid for. (In single-payer countries, the revenue to the government should be offset by lower tax rates.)
This is a better plan if you believe that a market-based solution to the economic problem is better than rationing, and if you believe that markets are most efficient when their failures are corrected.
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
Even if true, which I doubt, it's irrelevant. Paris can only control their environment, not the industrial policies of another country. Like it or not, they're doing what they can do.
The combined pollution of all the cars on the road in the entire country of France is a tiny drop in the bucket of pollution caused by industrial waste, mostly from poor countries struggling to get a foothold in the global economy.
They are plugging a leak in the wall while ignoring the torrent pouring out of the wide open window right next to it.
Talking about silly, you didn't read any of the article in question did you? They are addressing a local smog problem. Please elaborate on how limiting local pollution in the city of Paris is an ineffective way of reducing the local smog problem in the city of Paris?
Which of the "poor countries" right next door to France are causing all the smog in Paris? This is specifically to reduce extreme air pollution in the city that has been peaking quite high recently.
They are not trying to solve all pollution with this measure, nor is it permanent.
Smog and levels of particulate matter in large cities are generally a lot lower compared to before the 60s, when a lot of people still heated their houses with coal fires.
Surprisingly, standards for environmental conditions have improved in the last 50 years, particularly given the voluminous amount of evidence on how pollution negatively impacts public health, infrastructure, and nature.
Please help metamoderate.
The CRX probably puts more pollutants into the air than the heavy Camaro.
At least you thought it was a guess when you said it, and it was an incorrect one. It puts out less pollution, but the pollution is more dense. As it is a smaller engine, it is pumping through less air (specifically nitrogen, the inert gas that makes up most "air) so the specific amount of pollution is diluted less. The Camaro pumps a lot of air, and fuel, so it is less dense. And all our measurements are on pollution density (parts per million) not gross quantity per mile. The fact that the CRX burns half the fuel per mile of the Camaro, means that there is simply half the carbon to work with so there will be less overall pollution per mile, even if it is less "clean" per cubic inch of exhaust.
The leading cause of smog in Paris is people smoking cigarettes.
Also MPG != emissions.
Kinda makes a difference in the total amount of pollutants per mile... It is just that we don't measure it that way. We measure pollution per density, not pollution per work.
Your CRX is a dangerous deathtrap, the Prius is not, the NIHS wouldn't even let a company bring it to market.
It is also far worse in every single pollutant save CO2.
Also the way MPG is calculated is different now, more strict.
Also the new Prius is, if you go by the specifications a "midsize". I don't know about that, but I know my 6'2" self can sit in the backseat of one in reasonable comfort. You could not say that for a CRX. Don't get me wrong CO2 is bad, I'm not a climate change denialist, but the other stuff coming out of the tailpipe of 25 year old (and greater) cars is far worse.
Yes this is a peeve of mine, "why don't we just build cars like we did in the (fill in decade here)?"... No, actually don't want that, even if you think you do...
Many of the same people who call themselves libertarians also express the viewpoint that man's activities cannot possible influence our ecology.
It's my experience that most of the people who make assumptions about social groups they aren't a part of are full of shit, either by ignorance or intent.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
lol wut? +5 Interesting as if its just *common knowledge* that Mexico City tried this & found that too many people bought other cars...like we talk about that on /. all the time...WTF...
you need to present some kind of evidence...and mods need to fix the score
Thank you Dave Raggett
It's only enforced today (Monday March 17). For tomorrow (Tuesday 18th) it's already cancelled. They forecast less pollution. Also the public transports won't be free any more on Tuesday.
Hydrogen has no carbon footprint. The energy used to put hydrogen in a usable form may be considered to have a carbon footprint, but if you use that logic, everything has a carbon footprint, and nothing can avoid it. If you use electricity to generate your hydrogen from water, then hydrogen has no more carbon footprint than electric. Yes, I know much is taken from methane and such as it's lower cost, but that's the worst it can be, and even then the by-products are 100% captured. It's carbon neutral at worst, so long as your waste is disposed of properly.
Learn to love Alaska
The bucket holds four drops.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Can you say the old cities of Europe were designed to facilitate biking?
They are generally, at least to the extent that narrow streets are hell for cars and make biking more practical (or at least less nerve wracking) than driving.
From direct experience, Amsterdam and Copenhagen are cities that while not explicitly having an original design for bikes, were certainly re-designed around bikes - which means loads of very dedicated biking lanes everywhere, including bike-specific traffic signals (which is a real sign that you have entered the big leagues of designing around bikes). That's also not just a "bike lane" where a bike can be, but directionally specific bike lanes on each side of large streets.
But that doesn't mean they don't have cars, there are a LOT of cars driving around Amsterdam also. And there are so many bikes that at rush hour both bike and car lanes are horribly crowded.
Here in the US, we had cities that were so choked with smog that it caused respiratory ailments.
Yes, I remember how it was... emission controls helped that quite a lot. I would agree with someone else's post that Europe's reliance on lots more diesel cars is probably a big impediment to really improving the situation.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
A man goes to doctor, doctor says he has a blocked artery, he needs a bypass surgery. The doctor also says the man needs to give up cheeseburgers and cigarettes. The man says "Bullshit, it's the block in my veins that is killing me, not my diet or smoking!"
You're right that developing countries may be contributing more to pollution in the future, but you're wrong in taking that to mean that developed countries shouldn't bother taking annoying steps to solve the problem.
Unfortunately, both the patient in my story and developed nations will totally ignore that and will continue being irresponsible.
Purely electric cars have a footprint too, grid electricity has a footprint, on average, about the same as a 50mpg car -- more or less depending on where in the country you are -- or what country you're in.
No, it's a serious problem, particularly in Paris because 60% of the cars there run on diesel.
http://www.theatlanticcities.c...
Although diesel is much more efficient, it creates serious local pollution, smog and minute particles that cause real harm.
-WolfWithoutAClause
"Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!"Paris can only control their environment, not the industrial policies of another country. Like it or not, they're doing what they can do.
They can make a stink about it in the EU, probably file a lawsuit somewhere.
You don't have to put up with pollution from your neighbor and neither does an entire country.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
My experience is that people who live outside of NYC think that NYC == "Manhattan" while people who live inside NYC think that NYC == {Manhattan, Brooklyn, Bronx, Staten Island, Queens}. The latter is the official definition, but apart from that all the boroughs are strongly connected by subway (or ferry/subway in the case of Staten Island), sNYC taxis & busses, NYC income tax, NYC schools, a single mayor and government, and a number of cultural factors (walking culture, bodegas, etc.).
Which isn't to say that we're all one big happy family--people have strong allegiances to their borough, but I think most people in NYC feel like we are one city.
Expect some complaints from the Below-Average Bowlers League over this.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
and it is certainly worse in some parts of the city than others. Midtown is traditionally pretty bad and that's where tourists spend a lot of their time.
BTW: if you came in the summer you might have mistaken the smell of smog with that of hot garbage. You get used to it.
That used to be true but modern diesel cars have particle filters. Today petrol cars emit more fine particles than diesel ones.
Diesel cars are not the problem in the EU, the fuel sold in the EU for diesel cars is cleaner than the stuff sold in the US for trucks (less sulphur content). The EU/US emission standards are almost identical and were implemented at basically the same time. Geography make some cities worse than others, an inversion layer over any city will choke it after a few days. Some cities such as LA are particularly prone to inversion layers, others such as Chicago are known for their prevailing winds and don't suffer so much from undispersed smog.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
That used to be true but modern diesel cars have particle filters. Today petrol cars emit more fine particles than diesel ones.
That used to be true but modern petrol cars have particle filters ...
The energy used to put hydrogen in a usable form may be considered to have a carbon footprint, but if you use that logic, everything has a carbon footprint, and nothing can avoid it.
Correct! Give the man a cookie.
If you use electricity to generate your hydrogen from water, then hydrogen has no more carbon footprint than electric.
Well, actually, you're also having to deal with the conversion factor. Electrolytic production of hydrogen is not very efficient. And then you have to deal with the fact that nobody has got a fuel cell with a lifetime as good as Li-Ions, or as safe as they are, and the fact that the hydrogen storage tank costs can easily run you up into battery cost territory.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Here's the problem: thanks to favorable tax laws, people in Europe are buying diesel-powered automobiles in huge numbers--in fact probably over 60% of new cars sold in Europe in recent years are diesel powered.
Problem: until very recently, diesel-powered vehicles did not have to meet the same very strict emission requirements required for diesel car sales in the USA--namely, meeting the EPA Tier 2 Bin 5 (or California Air Reources Board ULEV Level II) certification. The Euro4 and Euro5 emissions requirements result in much higher NOx emissions and diesel particulates than the US standard, and as such with so many fairly polluting diesel auitomobiles, European cities in the very recent past started to run into problems with higher NOx and particulate levels in cities.
Today, new European cars have to meet the new Euro6 emissions standard, which is almost identical to EPA Tier 2 Bin 5. This is why the likes of Audi, BMW and Mercedes-Benz can now sell a lot more diesel-powered cars in the USA--the diesel engines only need very little change to meet EPA standards.
This is why I wonder London did not switch their famous double-decker buses and London taxis to compressed natural gas a LONG time ago. Such a change could have dramatically cleaned up the air of London, another city that has experienced NOx and particulate air pollution problems in recent years.
I recently heard the phrase "politician's syllogism" to refer to this statement...
"Go to CNN [for a] spell-checked, fact-checked summary" -- CmdrTaco
Those with odd-numbered plates lucked out; apparently they've already discontinued the practice, after having issued roughly 4000 tickets.
One especially pertinent quote from the linked article: ""I know it's not great to say it but I'm willing to take my car and pay the fine to get my kids to school, because I don't have the choice," one woman told the TV network."
And to top off the insanity, a so-called "hybrid" (a purely petrol-fired vehicle with regenerative braking) will be exempt, while a non-"hybrid" that gets better mileage will not? Idiotic.
Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.
They can make a stink about it in the EU, probably file a lawsuit somewhere.
Yes, make a stink about the stink. They can even make a federal case of it.
:-)
Purely electric cars have a footprint too, grid electricity has a footprint, on average, about the same as a 50mpg car -- more or less depending on where in the country you are -- or what country you're in.
Bzzzzt....sorry but you are waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay off there. A pure EV can go about 3-4 miles/ kwh. An ICE at 33 kwh per gallon of gas / (40 miles / gallon) is about 0.8 miles / kwh. In addition, electric power generated in a central location is generated about 3x as cleanly. So an EV has about 1/10th the carbon footprint on a millage basis. So that's what, the equivalent of 400 miles to the gallon? Oh, and I forgot about the fact that ICEs waste 90% of their power in inefficiencies against the ideal and an electric motor is usually about 75% efficient. Basically, an EV produces 1/10th the carbon footprint of an ICE based upon mileage. But kept telling people that EVs don't help too much. You are really a credit to the human race.
"Those that start by burning books, will end by burning men."
The ban was only one day, yesterday, and there we so many exceptions you had to be a bit unlucky not be covered by one. My car battery has been flat for several months now, so I wasn't going to be driving anyway!
And the "experts" are giving out contradictory information here, it's very annoying. Some are pointing at transport as the main contributor but that is a bit suspicious. The problems are absolutely not restricted to Paris - the high levels of particle pollution cover a third of the entire country of France. And not just in the cities, though it is worse there. Some are saying that when the east wind changes it will improve and that a lot of the grime is coming from dodgy factories in Eastern Europe. That in itself sounds fishy though, because we haven't heard anything about problems in Germany, and we would have if there had been problems there. But France has many more diesel cars than Germany, pointing back to transport. Who knows.
Testimony from a french driver with even plate (the restricted ones): he used the car pooling rule to be able to drive, but he droped the last passenger less than 1km from his own destination and was fined just after that... 22€ thank you.
I think that the AC was being sarcastic.
The combined pollution of all the cars on the road in the entire country of France is a tiny drop in the bucket of pollution caused by industrial waste, mostly from poor countries struggling to get a foothold in the global economy.
Some polloution causes a global affect, however much of the impact of polloution is fairly localised. If the chineese in bejing have horriblly pollouted air to breathe then that sucks for them but it isn't the paris governements problem. OTOH poor air quality in paris (even if it's nowhere near as bad as bejing) is very much the paris governments problem.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
In reality, the worst offenders in the pollution race include the US and China. Both are in the top ten most disgusting nations on earth... but as if that weren't bad enough, our consumerism is driving a lot of the consumption in developing nations, and we still burn more hydrocarbons per person than any other nation.
That's nice, but you've pulled your stats out of your ass.
Here's one map:
http://www.nytimes.com/interac...
Try this one on page 18 that says the same thing:
http://www.ucsusa.org/assets/d...
In short, you're completely wrong, you made up your numbers, and you are, at best, uninformed.
The fact that the CRX burns half the fuel per mile of the Camaro, means that there is simply half the carbon to work with so there will be less overall pollution per mile
There will be less CO2 certainly.
Whether you consider that to imply "less overall pollution" depends on how you score the different gassess in the exhaust.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register