Paris Bans Half of All Cars On the Road 405
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."
Mexico City tried this... (Score:4, Interesting)
The found that people bought cheap older, less environment-friendly second vehicles so they could bypass the restrictions, making the problem worse.
Is not going to work! (Score:5, Interesting)
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:Is not going to work! (Score:5, Interesting)
Yeah. It only works in the short term. In the long term what can be done is the same thing they do in Singapore. They have a limited number of license plates for driving all week and those are auctioned. Weekend only license plates have no such restrictions.
They dump the auction profits into the public transportation system.
Re:Mexico City tried this... (Score:2, Interesting)
Imposing emissions standards on lawncare equipment solves a real problem.
Banning two stroke engines would do so much for our air quality. I have read that Briggs & Stratton have a lot of clout in Congress and have worked to shoot down multiple attempts at regulating small engines.
Re:Think you miss the point (Score:5, Interesting)
Let me way-in on that.
I grew up in Paris and the problem there is that the city is way too big for its own good. Every single mode of transportation is overcrowded: the subway, the trains, the streets, the circular belt ("peripherique"), the buses, the pedestrian/biking ways, the tramways.
This overcrowding comes from decades of political will to centralize everything in the country in Paris. The city was never designed to take that kind of traffic. The last major redesign of the city was by haussmann at the end of the 19th century. Since then, only minor adjustment has been make: subways, tramways, "les quais", circular belt. But they all contribute to bring more people in.
The only solution for Paris (and for French efficiency) is to push people, administration, businesses into other cities.
Re:Think you miss the point (Score:5, Interesting)
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...
Re:purchase time (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Is not going to work! (Score:4, Interesting)
Yeah. It only works in the short term. In the long term what can be done is the same thing they do in Singapore. They have a limited number of license plates for driving all week and those are auctioned. Weekend only license plates have no such restrictions.
They dump the auction profits into the public transportation system.
Singapore is a small, very connected city with a very good public transport system and extremely well regulated taxi system (which makes them incredibly cheap, I've never paid over SG$30 for a cab from any two points in SIN), in fact Singapore taxi's are so well regulated your average libertarian would die of fright (especially considering how cheap they are).
So limiting the number of cars works well in a place like Singapore, but it wouldn't work in many other cities including Paris