Paris hits brakes on move to ban polluting cars

Owners of petrol vehicles made before 2006 given six-month reprieve to buy replacement

Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo wants to clean up the city's air with the 2024 Olympic Games on the horizon. Getty

Paris has hit the brakes on its signature green car initiative, with owners of pollution-generating older cars given a six-month reprieve to buy a cleaner replacement.

Petrol cars built before 2006, and diesel ones older than 2011, were from July 1 scheduled to be banished from within a Paris ring road.

It would be the biggest step yet in Mayor Anne Hidalgo’s plan to drive out dirty cars and clean up the city’s air with the Paris 2024 Olympics on the horizon.

Ms Hidalgo, a Socialist Party candidate for the French presidency, wants a near-total traffic ban in the heart of the French capital, one of Europe's most dense urban landscapes.

But officials at the Paris Metropolitan Authority announced this week that the July 1 deadline would be pushed back until at least 2023.

They said two aspects were not yet ready: loans for poorer households to help them buy a greener car; and an automated surveillance system to spot offending vehicles.

These two elements “are decisive for proceeding with the low-emission zone calendar”, said Patrick Ollier, the president of the metropolitan authority.

An estimated 1.2 million cars would be barred from Paris under the move to bar motorists with a so-called Crit’Air 3 sticker, one of the categories in a ranking of polluting vehicles.

Older cars with a Crit’Air 4 or 5 badge are already restricted under measures brought in in 2019 and 2021. The bans apply from 8am to 8pm.

Some newer petrol cars, and all diesel cars, are scheduled to be banned from 2024. Electric vehicles are awarded the safest Crit’Air 0 sticker, with hybrid cars one step lower.

In another initiative, a speed limit of just 30 kilometres per hour was introduced fo most of Paris last August, with other roads turned over entirely to pedestrians.

More than 5.5 million people live within the Paris orbital motorway, the A86, and poor air quality is blamed for hundreds of avoidable deaths a year in the city.

However, critics say the Paris initiative unfairly penalises suburban residents and workers who do not have easy access to public transport.

Motorists can claim a bonus of up to €6,000 ($6,770) from the French government for buying an electric car, although this will drop by €1,000 in July.

The metropolitan authority says similar schemes to the one in Paris "already adopted in 231 European cities or regions ... have proved particularly effective in cutting traffic emissions".

Other French cities, including Lyon and Grenoble, have adopted the Crit’Air rankings to establish their own clean air measures.

In Britain, authorities in Manchester this week moved to delay a clean air zone scheme after criticism that it would punish working people.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson described the proposal to bring in daily charges for polluting vehicles as “unworkable and economically devastating”.

Mayor Andy Burnham subsequently announced that charges would not come in from May as initially planned, while emissions targets may be pushed back from 2024 to 2027.