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Paris Makes All Public Transportation Free In Battle Against 'Worst Air Pollution For 10 Years' (independent.co.uk)
Paris has barred some cars from its streets and has made public transportation free as it suffers from the worst and most prolonged winter pollution for at least 10 years, the Airparif agency said on Wednesday. The Independent reports: Authorities have said only drivers with odd-numbered registration plates can drive in the capital region on Wednesday. Drivers of even-numbered cars were given the same opportunity on Tuesday, but could now be fined up to 35 EUR if they are caught behind the wheel. More than 1,700 motorists were fined for violations on Tuesday. Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo said images of smog blanketing the capital were proof of the need to reduce vehicle use in the city center. The air pollution peak is due to the combination of emissions from vehicles and from domestic wood fires as well as near windless conditions which means pollutants have not been dispersed, the Airparif agency said. "This is a record period (of pollution) for the last 10 years," Karine Leger of AirParif told AFP by telephone. For more than a week, Airparif has published readings of PM10 at more than 80 micrograms per cubic meter of air particles, triggering the pollution alert. Along with odd-numbered cars, hybrid or electric vehicles as well as those carrying three or more people will be allowed to roam the roads. Foreign and emergency vehicles will be unaffected.
Avoiding some confusion in the comments, Paris is making all public transportation free for one or two days alone, to reduce the ammount of smog/particulate matter in the air. No, they are not making public transportation free indefinitely, this is an emergency measure... not all that different from similar stuff that China and India already did.
These are predicted to happen in several cities around the world in particular atmospheric conditions... if things keeps getting worse though, you can predict that soon, along with heavy snow days, we'll also have heavy smog days for some cities.
No, you mean that Illinois decided to serve the elderly population by accommodating their situation and get them off the roads since many of them were forced to continue driving, thereby putting everybody at risk, but a bunch of twats decided that was just unacceptable, but they couldn't quite find a way to kill the entire, program, let alone turn them into Soylent Green.
Well being completely untrue tends to have that effect on an opinion.
This has nothing to do with refugees (Who are not 'burning shit' in paris). Calais was a good 300+ km away, nearly a year ago, and ironically the fires where lit by englishmen.
But hey, keep mashing the crazy keys Anonymous Coward.
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
Pretty sure Reuters is one of those fake-news sites the liberals have been hyperventilating about recently, after all it disputes "fact" that he knows.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Except, not even the French want to carpool with Frenchmen.
You are welcome on my lawn.
... The average American living in the suburbs is ~ 20-30 miles from the nearest city / shopping area.
Where the hell did you get that statistic from? If you're 20-30 miles from a mall you're no longer in the suburbs, you're considered to be rural.
You're right, it's a luxury that negatively affects everyone else to the point of being a health hazard, which is why it's ok to ban it. Just because they can afford it doesn't mean everyone else needs to needlessly suffer. They could just ride a bike if they wanted. Or walk.
moox. for a new generation.
It's already a giant ironic collector.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Eventually he got inmpeached and the new Gov discovered that free rides were not sustainable. So they means tested it.
Dunno how they discovered it wasn't, but FWIW it might be an unfortunate (mis-)find.
Public transportation where I live is free for seniors. Trains, metros, busses, boats, etc., in all cities and between all cities. Everything except airplanes. It surprised me somewhat when I came here for the first time, and it certainly surprised my parents when they first came (since as EU seniors they didn't need to pay either), but apparently this has been going on since the communist era.
There arguably is a cost. Perhaps one can shrug it off as in "meh, the bus is scheduled anyway. The only point in time where it might be problematic is during rush hours when you need to field a few more busses." Or perhaps not.
Either way, the positive side effects are observable when you care to look: seniors tend to visit their children and grand children across the country instead of it being the other way around like where I'm from - and more often, at that. You see seniors everywhere, and the contrast in their behavior is palpable when I compare this with the other two dozen or so countries I've lived in. When they do go out they can afford to go to cafes and restaurants, give some money to their kids and grand kids, etc. Plus nanny savings that allow single moms to work more than part-time where applicable.
I've no idea if the net economic balance is positive, but when you factor in the quality of life side effects across generations it certainly seems worth doing.
Are VW Diesel's still allowed on the road?
Allow service vehicles, public transportation, cabs and bicycles, and everyone will be happy.
This will be unpopular with North Americans (US and Canadians alike) who live their lives in cars, but in Europe we can conceive of an existence where you don't need to hop into a car every time you have to go from point A to point B.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
Good point, and indeed, carpooling is encouraged in Paris on smog days: although they ban half of the cars (those with odd-numbered license plates one day, even-numbered the next), cars that transport 3 people or more are exempt from the ban.
Avoiding some confusion in the comments, Paris is making all public transportation free for one or two days alone, to reduce the amount of smog/particulate matter in the air. No, they are not making public transportation free indefinitely, this is an emergency measure... not all that different from similar stuff that China and India already did.
These are predicted to happen in several cities around the world in particular atmospheric conditions... if things keeps getting worse though, you can predict that soon, along with heavy snow days, we'll also have heavy smog days for some cities.
"Or need to get there faster. "
Get there faster in a car? Not in any European city.
Authorities have said only drivers with odd-numbered registration plates can drive in the capital region on Wednesday. ....
Great System. Rich self entitled bastards with multiple cars get to drive whenever they want, working stiffs trying to get to their jobs have another burden. Also, if people have multiple vehicles and one is a small relatively clean and efficient vehicle and the other is a large dirty low mileage vehicle, this law tells them to drive the dirty inefficient vehicle some of the time.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
This is totally fake bullshit. For starters there are not that many refugees in Paris. And they have houses in Paris. The largest sum in the EU is residing in Germany. And they have houses too. Most domestic fires are fireplaces which middle class families have for fun.
I don't know about France but in Germany those "few euros" quickly add up to something that looks more like a fine precisely design to discourage the use of public transportation. One-way one person is around 5 euros for anything but the shortest stretch (you can easily pay 4.65 euro even for just one stop if crossing the tariff zones). And there's no cheaper option for a return ticket so you're looking at 20 euros for a return trip for two persons. It just doesn't compare with 1 euro in gas plus 1-1.5 euro parking (if needed).
Plus no matter if there is no inflation, no matter if the prices for energy and gas drop the prices for public transportation go up like 4% each time I check...
The way it is and because of loss aversion many people consider public transport not something cheap that lacks comfort but rather some expense they wouldn't do unless they're forced (like car in the shop or they can't drive because of some medical problem, or they want to drink something, etc).
And the pollution isn't that bad at all. It's on par with Boston in the winter. It's nice that I don't have to pay to ride the subway, but this reporting and reaction is hyperbole.
If things keep getting worse? Perhaps in developing countries. But such smog already was a common occurrence in large European cities in the early 20th century, and in some cities as early as the 1700s. This was mostly due to burning wood or coal for heating and cooking. The switch to natural gas for heating along with improvements in IC engine technology, and a shift from diesel to petrol (except some countries like France where diesel is still very popular), have made the air here a lot cleaner since the '60s. Things have gotten a lot better, and they are still improving.
People still keep going on about cars and pollution, but in truth it's a small contributor these days, especially to particulate matter. Last figures for PM2.5 particulate emissions in NL show a only 5% contribution from cars (not including trucks). In contrast, container vessels contribute 17%, and a whopping 26% comes from fireplaces. Not surprising then that people already managed to work up a smog in pre-industrial times.
If you want to help the environment and prevent smog, stop worrying about public transport, ditch your diesel and buy a modern car (in NL, maybe we ought to ditch the luxury tax on new cars that in some cases exceeds the factory price). And stop using the damn fireplace, or get an efficient closed fireplace or stove.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Every week I drive to the supermarket and pick up 20-30 kg of stuff[*].
Why do you do this? I haven't done a big supermarket shop in person for over 10 years. It takes 10-20 minutes to drive each way, an hour wandering around the shop, I have to queue for the checkouts, and it's just a horrible experience. All of the major supermarket chains deliver and it takes about 10-20 minutes to do the shop online (5 minutes for a routine shop where I'm just adding stuff from my favourites) and then it's delivered to my door, by a van that's delivering to a dozen other people on the way.
I'm doing pretty well just to walk through the store and COLLECT the stuff. And no, nobody will deliver it, even if I had two pennies to rub together to pay them with.
Delivery from most supermarkets here is free and even from the rest it's far cheaper than the cost of driving there, even if you don't factor in the cost of your time.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Paris and Europe did a strong diesel push for better mpg but the manufacturers cheated.
Now they have more smog than they anticipated.
Mean while petrol is getting cleaner. A strong push on hybrids and electrics would help quite a bit too.
At least until trump takes office we had an EPA with a backbone. For information testing and compliance and it wasn't perfect but it drastically reduced smog and emmisions. Combined with fire code and even wood stoves with particulate filters on them and our situations is better
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
The city council had spent millions remodelling the city centre to allow larger bendy busses when I was there. I never saw one more than 50% full and apparently a year or two ago they discontinued them. If they'd spent the same amount of money on more frequent, subsidised, minibuses, treating it as infrastructure that encourages people to do things that raise tax revenue rather than as a profit centre, then they'd have had far more people using public transport. Instead, privately owned bus companies have made a lot of money and it's now at a point where it's cheaper to drive than to take the bus.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
When I worked in Paris, I lived in the suburbs surrounding Paris and worked in another one.
Public transport was easily 1h30m of traveling time. I would have to go through the town center and back. Share the train with all the people with the flu, suffer the unpredictability of the Parisian public transport.
In my car, it was a solid 20 minutes, and I never caught the flu. I was saving 2 hours everyday thanks to my car.
I'm not saying it's perfect for everyone, but for some people, it's definitely really great. Would I ever take the public transport again? Probably, if there were better routes around, not like this though.
I wish the French good luck on this, but I don't think it will do much except push homeless people into underground metro stations.
I think that you are wrong about that prediction. In my area they effectively halved the price of public transport by reducing the number of tariff zones and usage rose dramatically. It was most notable during off-peak times when the trains had been quite underused but are now fairly full until the last service.
Previously I had advocated for making public transport completely free, and I thought it was a stupidly short-sighted move to simply reduce the costs. But after I saw how many extra people began using the system after they did that, I have had to change my mind because I don't think if they could support the extra passengers if the service was completely free; at least not without some major expansion of capacity.
Newsflash: major US cities aren't the same as Paris, and load factors on buses are a shit ton higher there than where you reside.
That's really only useful if you can find two people who live near you, keep the same hours, and have workplaces within easy walking distance of yours. The slug line system for DC HOV lanes is much more effective.
That's great for you, but I've never lived anywhere that had grocery delivery. Stores have recently introduced services that will, for a fee, collect your order and put it in your car for you once you get there. About $5/order, definitely not free. And that's only in the past six months.
I had the same experience in SF. 15 minutes driving including parking, or an hour and a half minimum on MUNI (bus, train, bus). Asthma plus hills plus office job equals no, so there was certainly no biking or walking going on. Nobody needs to smell my pits that bad.
This is why we need PRT. Buses don't solve the problem because they don't go where you need them to go. Self-driving cars don't solve the problem because they won't alleviate traffic issues, only parking.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Well, the tax thing is more a way to drive poor people out of the city while maintaining the rich one. I'd say that given that Paris municipality is socialist, it won't happen. But since they forbidden old cars because they pollute, while all big SUVs, Ferraris etc can still come and burn 20L of petrol to go across the city... it's not impossible they'd do something like that too
Actually, I think automated cars would solve some traffic issues. Around here, most freeway jams are caused by people not knowing how to merge and fucking the whole freeway over when they try to enter at 35 mph. Automated cars would be much better at merging.
They would also take interchange ramps at speed instead of slowing down too, which is the primary cause of fucking up a particular five mile stretch of freeway around here. So yes, traffic would get better with automated cars.
It's not emissions "you can see" that we base our standards on, it's how they affect smog. NOx emissions are invisible too (when they come out of the tailpipe), but the problem is that they react with stuff in the air to create really nasty smog. CO2 isn't just invisible, it's completely harmless as far as smog goes, as well as human health (as long as there's sufficient oxygen in the air). To us, CO2 is inert, just like nitrogen (N2). The only problem with it is that it causes global warming, but that's a global problem, not a local problem like smog. So worrying about CO2 while ignoring NOx in your emissions standards means you're sacrificing the air quality in your localities in order to try to reduce global warming.
I was recently in the town of Saas-Fee in the canton of Valais in Sitzerland: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
All fossil fuel vehicles are banned from this town. There is a special underground garage to park cars outside.
People, the life in 19th century was better than now. Clean air, quiet splendid streets without grey rubber dust from the cars' tires, nice houses, all districts of the town are equally prestigious, as all of them are clean and calm, without steel rivers of cars and clouds of toxic smoke.
Maybe your experience is outdated. Specifically if you just cross a "circle" for Munich the one-way ticket is 5.40 ... wait just for the next 2 days because then it goes up to 5.60, they were probably thinking it's too cheap...
Note that what they call "Inner District/Munich" is 4 circles and if you go again to the same circle you have to count it again. Like you go 2-1-2 it is 3 circles = 8.40 EUR.
I'm sorry, but that is wrong, and I hope you haven't overspend for long. There is a significant difference between rings and zones. There are just 4 zones (the coloured ones on this plan). For single-trip tickets, you only count the number of zones, not the number of rings. Anything in the white zone (which is all of the built-up area of Munich) is just one zone, and is (currently) EUR 2.70 per trip. The most you can pay is EUR 10.80, which is for "4+" zones, and allows you to travel, say, from Tutzing to the airport (nominally 7 zones). And you can get a group day ticket for the green and white zones for EUR 12.20, which gets you out to Lake Starnberg, then to the Garching campus of TUM, and back to Goetheplatz for Theatre...
The smaller rings are only used to calculate the price for subscriptions, not for single-trip and day tickets.
Stephan
Every week I drive to the supermarket and pick up 20-30 kg of stuff
This is a key cultural difference between Europeans and Americans, and it doesn't get pointed out enough. When I lived in Europe, I'd stop by the store almost every day on my way home and by what I needed for the next 24-48 hours, which'd always fit in just one bag (drank tap water). Living in the US now, I've gotten out of the habit and instead tend to buy in bulk.
If there were more smaller supermarkets/butchers/grocers/etc more widely and evenly distributed in the US, then we wouldn't have to "carry cargo" at that scale. That's neither a quick nor an easy change to make, however.
Flu shots are based on a guess each year of which flu strains to guard against. They've gotten the guess wrong some years, and people ended up with the flu whether they got the shot or not. If you have a weakened immune system, this is a big problem.
The GP seems to think taking the car is a valid alternative to taking a flu shot. That's just crazy. It's not public transportation you must avoid: it's everyone, starting with your kids if they go to school!
It's the fourth day the alternate traffic circulation rule is applied (and the first in Lyon [where the public tranportation company is on strike ...] and Villeurbanne). Since I've right now a nice view on La Defense from my desk, I can say that the fog is lighter than previous days, but still here.
: :)) :) There's actually 353 buses lines in Paris and the nearest suburbs. ... let's say, almost reliable. At rush hour, we have 1 train every 15 minutes, and after that, one each 1/2 hour or each hour (depend of the station and the RER line).
... that's it, I think I haven't forgot anything ... all the other things is true (the smell, especiallly during summer, the crowd, the way the disease could be catch in the metro ...) ... Ah, one more thing : the chimney using is tolerated for supplementary heating or for your own pleasure (see https://www.service-public.fr/... [french page]), and the studies who says that this wood bunring polution represent 23% of the pollution are very controversed.
I're red some wrong statments, and here's some clarifications
- the monthly transportation fee is 73€ for everyone, with no travel limit adn all transportation medium in "Ile de France" (quite a large area, take a look in Google
- the bus network (RATP inside Paris, other companies, like Transdev, outside) is pretty dense : look on Google map on Paris, and zoom enough to see the little blue buses, you'll see
- there's a metro each 2 or 3 minutes, if all works well (but because of the terrorist threat, every abandonned luggage tend to cause delays)
- the RER, who permit me to go to work (I live near Fontainebleau and work near La Defense, and out of the holyday season, I can't even imagine to go to work by car [count about 2-3 hours x2]), is
Mmmm