The Mayor of Rome has announced plans to ban diesel cars from the city centre by 2024, becoming the latest European city to declare war on the fuel.
In an effort to clear the city’s notoriously congested streets and improve air quality, Mayor Virginia Raggi said yesterday that she would adopt “strong measures”, including an outright ban on the use of private diesels in Rome’s historical centre.
Rome has already tried to limit the flow of traffic through its centre to improve air quality on particularly poor days for pollution levels, but generally such rules have not been strictly enforced.
The city now follows other urban centres such as Oxford in setting deadlines for an outright, permanent ban on polluting cars. More are expected to follow suit, particularly in light of a landmark ruling from a top German court yesterday which decreed that German cities can place immediate bans on diesel cars to cut air pollution in urban centres.
As a result of the ruling, Stuttgart and Düsseldorf are expected to be among the first German cities to set out plans for a diesel ban.
Source: businessgreen.com
