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At the beginning of the 1970s, the President of France, Georges Pompidou, authorised the construction of riverside roads, blighting the banks of the Seine, without the decision ever really being contested.
Today, the car remains overwhelmingly popular because of its flexibility and individuality but local elected officials must take into account the necessity of making the car compatible with the demands of environmental protection. The measures that they are taking (narrowing the widest roads, widening pavements, reduced car parking spaces, parking meter prices and raised car parks, urban toll…) are intended to encourage citizens to limit the use of their personal cars.
Nevertheless, an efficient town policy cannot simply focus on town planning but must also envisage measures that will encourage some motorists to change their means of transport and others to choose "clean" cars.
Favouring the least polluting vehicles
Not being able to completely ban vehicles from towns, local elected officials can have a voluntarist policy and seek to favour those vehicles that pollute the least. This is the principle adopted by numerous cities such as London, Milan, and Berlin. It is, more generally, what the French authorities have done, with the establishment of the no-claims bonus/loaded premium, subsidies for the purchase of electric or hybrid (electric + thermal) vehicles, vehicles running on biofuels, natural compressed gas or on liquefied natural gas (LPG). The new calculation of the company vehicle tax, now entirely based on CO2 emissions, has also redirected the market towards those vehicles consuming less and, as a consequence, polluting less.
But what exactly is a "clean car"? The very notion is sometimes contested, as whatever the type of engine, the materials used and the techniques implemented during its construction have an environmental impact. At the moment, a "clean car" is a car emitting a minimum of greenhouse gases. Again we should not forget that the private car "represents only around 10% of transport energy consumption and much less if we limit ourselves to town centres which are the areas leading the most active policies in terms of eliminating cars", as we are appropriately reminded by Marie-Hélène Massot, Director of Research at the Town Mobility Transports Laboratory (the LVMT, which is shared by the National Highways School [l’Ecole nationale des Ponts et Chaussées*], the French Institute for National Research on Transport and Safety and the University of Marne-la-Vallée) and Jean-Pierre Orfeuil (Paris Town Planning Institute – University of Paris XII) in
Should energy constraint regulate town or vehicles (source text in French)?
* a top French engineering school
