Clean transport: the most polluted areas of France will have to commit by 2020

Paris – The government wants to sign the return of commitments with the fourteen most polluted territories of France to restrict by 2020 the circulation of the most polluting vehicles.
  

The creation of these low-emission zones (ZFE) is part of a salvo of measures in favor of clean mobility that ministers of ecological transition, Nicolas Hulot, and Transport, Elisabeth Borne, will unveil on Friday.

In these highly polluted areas (including Grenoble, Marseille-Aix, Toulon, Nice, Lyon and Strasbourg), which led Europe to send France to the European courts, communities will have to restrict the circulation of certain types of vehicles (old diesel, heavy trucks). They will have a certain flexibility on the geographical limits, the hourly places, the types of vehicles concerned, according to the local specificities.

The government undertakes to put in place the conditions (automatic control of plates, etc.) to make these areas viable, because if the communities can create these areas since 2015, only Grenoble and Paris have taken the step.

Among the other measures announced on Friday, others aim to accelerate the greening of transport.

The bonus / malus system applied to the purchase of a new vehicle based on its CO2 emissions will be further strengthened, with a further decline next year of the threshold at which the penalty applies. And it will decrease again the following years.

The bonus will also be adjusted, but in a still unspecified proportion.

Support for the purchase of environmentally friendly lorries powered by natural gas will be extended until 2021, open to electric vehicles and hydrogen, and increased for small trucks, which are mainly present in city centers.

Finally, for electric vehicles, the government will support the development of charging infrastructure, in particular through greater support for the cost of connecting terminals to the electricity grid and exemptions for companies offering free their employees.

The government also wants to promote alternatives to personal transportation.

To develop car pooling, communities that wish can create dedicated lanes. Measures will be taken to ensure that employers can cover a portion of the transportation costs of carpooling employees to their workplaces, even though the Ministry of the Ecological Transition does not specify the timing and amount of this help.

However, we will have to wait a little longer for bike support measures. They will be announced at the beginning, before September 15th.