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Hamburg is first city in Germany to order diesel driving bans

Authorities in Hamburg said on Wednesday they would ban some diesel vehicles from two major arteries to improve air quality, making the German port city the first to take the long-feared step.

Published: 23 May 2018 11:47 CEST
Hamburg is first city in Germany to order diesel driving bans
Photo: DPA

“Driving limits for older diesel vehicles can now come into force as planned” thanks to a decision by a top court, the city-state's government said in a statement.

A 1,600-metre section of the Stresemannstrasse highway in the Altona district will be closed to older diesel trucks from May 31st.

Meanwhile both diesel-powered trucks and cars that do not meet the latest Euro 6 emissions standards will be banned from a 580-metre stretch of another major and heavily polluted road, the Max-Brauer-Allee.

SEE ALSO: Hamburg prepares for diesel driving bans with signs warning motorists

Exemptions will be allowed for local residents and businesses as well as for delivery vehicles, ambulances and rubbish trucks.

The late February decision by Germany's top administrative court that cities could ban older diesels from certain roads to cut pollution has set drivers on edge.

Government officials have been scrambling for ways to improve air quality without imposing bans.

They fear exclusion zones could disrupt citizens' lives and the economy as well as taking a massive bite out of the resale value of older diesels.

“We have a very concrete set of measures with the clear aim of cleaning up the air without limiting mobility,” such as subsidies for electric vehicles and hardware refits to older diesel bus fleets, Transport Minister Andreas Scheuer told the Augsburger Allgemeine newspaper Wednesday.

While some 66 cities exceeded air pollution limits last year, Berlin aims to bring the number down “very quickly into the single digits,” he said.

But sales of diesel cars have already slumped, following years of scandal around millions of vehicles rigged by car giant Volkswagen to fool regulators' emissions checks — with suspicion falling on other carmakers as well.

So far the government has rejected the idea of forcing automakers to pay to refit older diesels to meet the latest emissions standards.

It is “not in our interest to weaken the car industry with political measures so that it has no ability to invest in its own future,” Chancellor Angela Merkel told parliament last week.

Germany's concern for its car industry finds short shrift in Brussels, where the European Commission said last week it was taking Germany and five other member nations to court over their failure to meet the bloc's air quality standards.

READ ALSO: Here's how you could be affected by diesel bans in German cities

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‘Città 30’: Which Italian cities will bring in new speed limits?

Bologna has faced heavy criticism - including from the Italian government - after introducing a speed limit of 30km/h, but it's not the only city to approve these rules.

Published: 23 January 2024 15:12 CET
'Città 30': Which Italian cities will bring in new speed limits?

Bologna on January 17th became Italy’s first major city to introduce a speed limit of 30km/h on 70 percent of roads in the city centre under its ‘Città 30’ plan, first announced in 2022, and initially set to come into force by June 2023.

The move made Bologna one of a growing number of European cities, including Paris, Madrid, Brussels, and Bilbao, to bring in a 30km/h limit aimed at improving air quality and road safety.

But the change was met last week with a go-slow protest by Bologna’s taxi drivers and, perhaps more surprisingly, criticism from the Italian transport ministry, which financed the measure.

Matteo Salvini, who is currently serving as Italy’s transport minister, this week pledged to bring in new nationwide rules dictating speed limits in cities that would reverse Bologna’s new rule.

Salvini’s League party has long criticised Bologna’s ‘Città 30’ plan, claiming it would make life harder for residents as well as people working in the city and would create “more traffic and fines”.

OPINION: Italians and their cars are inseparable – will this ever change?

Bologna’s speed limit has sparked a heated debate across Italy, despite the increasingly widespread adoption of such measures in many other cities in Europe and worldwide in recent years.

While Bologna is the biggest Italian city to bring in the measure, it’s not the first – and many more local authorities, including in Rome, are now looking to follow their example in the next few years.

Some 60 smaller cities and towns in Italy have adopted the measure so far, according to Sky TG24, though there is no complete list.

This compares to around 200 French towns and cities to adopt the rule, while in Spain the same limit has applied to 70 percent of all the country’s roads since since May 2021 under nationwide rules, reports LA7.

The first Italian town to experiment with a 30 km/h speed limit was Cesena, south of Bologna, which introduced it in 1998. Since then, the local authority has found that serious accidents have halved, while the number of non-serious ones has remained unchanged.

Olbia, in Sardinia, also famously introduced the speed limit in 2021.

The city of Parma is planning to bring in the same rules from 2024, while the Tuscan capital of Florence approved five 30km/h zones in the city centre earlier this month.

Turin is set to bring in its first 30km/h limits this year as part of its broader plan to improve transport infrastructure, aimed at reducing smog and increasing livability.

READ ALSO: Why electric cars aren’t more popular in Italy

Meanwhile, the mayor of Rome, Roberto Gualtieri, has promised to introduce the limit on 70 percent of the capital’s roads by the end of his mandate, which expires in 2026.

In Milan, while the city council has voted in favour of lower speed limits and other traffic limitations on central roads, it’s not clear when these could come into force.

Milan mayor Beppe Sala this week said a 30 km/h limit would be “impossible” to implement in the Lombardy capital.

And it’s notable that almost all of the cities looking at slowing down traffic are in the north or centre-north of Italy.

There has been little interest reported in the measures further south, where statistics have shown there are a higher number of serious road accidents – though the total number of accidents is in fact higher in the north.

According to the World Health Organisation the risk of death to a pedestrian hit by a car driven at 50 km/h is 80 percent. The risk drops to 10 percent at 30 km/h.

The speed limit on roads in Italian towns and cities is generally 50, and on the autostrade (motorways) it’s up to 130.

Many Italian residents are heavily dependent on cars as their primary mode of transport: Italy has the second-highest rate of car ownership in Europe, with 670 vehicles per 1,000 residents, second only to Luxembourg with 682, according to statistics agency Eurostat.

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