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."

Comments

Is not going to work!

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Paris had cars?

[Anonymous Coward]

You built your cities so that biking, walking or taking the train isn't an option. That's that difference. Many people in Europe, most even, use cars daily, but they're not used for everything by everyone. If people want to take the train or ride a bicycle, they can, because the infrastructure exists. Imagine the traffic jams and the smog if these people also drove their cars everywhere.

Think you miss the point

[SuperKendall]

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.

Re:Think you miss the point

[Zibodiz]

While I've admittedly never been to New York, all of my colleagues from NYC purchased cars after they moved away. The city streets are almost exclusively used by taxis and public transportation. Most people apparently use the subway to get around.
NYC is the largest city on our continent, and also one of the oldest. Infrastructure design isn't the reason for most Americans using cars. It's the fact that most of our cities have very separate housing and business districts, and there's no practical way to transport everyone 30+ miles each way every day to work, especially when the residential areas are evenly distributed in a circle around the business districts. If there were a functioning light rail/bus/subway system, it would take an additional hour or so of your day to use it, since there would have to be several interchanges to make it reasonable. NYC is the exception to this, since it was built before fast transportation existed, and hence the residential areas were mingled with the business districts.

Re:Think you miss the point

[Anonymous Coward]

NYC is not the largest city on the continent, Mexico City is bigger.

Re:Think you miss the point

[jfengel]

It's more about the use than the age. After all, NYC isn't any older than Boston, but it has a very different development history.

NYC is an island: when people say "NYC" they mean "Manhattan". It was a manufacturing hub all through the 19th century, having access to both materials and markets through its ports. There were bridges, but they could only carry so many people per day, and labor tended to concentrate on the island itself.

Further, it was a major port of entry for foreign arrivals, many of whom found homes in the Manhattan slums, which had very high density. They proceeded to work for those factories, most famously as sweatshops.

That concentration became self-affirming: the wealth and need for capital made it a financial center in the 20th century, and the limited land made it build up instead of out. It did develop suburbs in Brooklyn and Queens and Staten Island, and they look a lot like suburbs elsewhere, but they're not what people think of when they say "New York City".

Boston was also based around its harbor, but its geography meant that the manufacturing moved out of the city proper. They built up famous manufacturing suburbs like Lowell, where the land was cheaper. The city is more spread out; it's more akin to European cities than most in America but it still doesn't have the intensive concentration of NYC.

NYC still spread out fast enough that it needed a public transportation system, and farsighted city planners built it one of the best subways in the world. These helped connect what became (in later decades) the skyscraper boom. That makes NYC very different from European cities, which were designed around walkability between relatively low buildings from centuries past.

Er... hadn't meant to launch into a dissertation. Thanks for reading this far...

OLD NEWS

[Charliemopps]

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...

 

Re:Its silly

[i kan reed]

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".

Re:Its silly

[Anonymous Coward]

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?

Re:Carpooling

[houstonbofh]

Time to buy a few RealDolls.

No, really Mom! It's for the car pool!

Re:purchase time

[timeOday]

No, because it's a ONE DAY BAN, and the first one since 1997. Even-numbered plates today, odd tomorrow. It's a specific measure for specific atmospheric conditions that made things smoggy in Paris at the moment.

99% of the responses below (and above) are irrelevant because they ignore that very simple fact.

Re:purchase time

[whathappenedtomonday]

Granted, 2-strokes can be and usually are annoying and a source of serious pollution. They don't have to be, though. I drive a direct injection 2-stroke, and while it still does burn oil, [t]he amount of oil is so small that it has no noticeable effect on emissions, and it has none of the pass-through problems with oil as in a carbureted 2-stroke. It is a rather silent, efficient, low-cost and comparatively eco-friendly means of transportation. So, while carbureted 2-stroke scooter engines are annoying, that does not mean that all scooter suck.