Major Cities to Implement Ban on Diesel Vehicles by 2025

Mayors of major cities like Madrid, Athens, Paris and Mexico City have jointly agreed to impose bans on diesel-powered cars and trucks in their respective cities by 2025. The mayors of these cities made the announcement at the C40 Mayors Summit which was held in Mexico City recently. As part of this drive to reduce emissions, the mayors said that they would be encouraging investment in alternative forms of transportation like bus, rail, and bicycles.

Air pollution is giving rise to as many as 6.5 million deaths every year across the world. Diesel exhaust is particularly toxic when it comes to lung damage as it comprises particulate matter and increases the percentage of ground-level ozone. The mayors of the four cities also said that they would work together to persuade automotive manufacturers to stop production of diesel engine vehicles within the next decade.

This is not the first such initiative made to reduce vehicular emissions. In the summer of 2016, Paris had imposed a ban on all vehicles that were made prior to 1997 – diesel or petrol – from entering the city limits. Paris has plans to reduce its greenhouse-gas emissions to 25 percent of the current levels by 2050. It is projected that the move will impact about 500,000 vehicle owners in the French capital.

Mexico City also had recently imposed a one-time ban on about one million vehicles in March this year when the air quality was particularly bad after smog checks and other pollution-reducing initiatives were relaxed in 2015. About 20 per cent of the drivers of such vehicles ignored the ban and city authorities decided to extend bad-air warning to four days. Other major global cities which have enacted temporary bans on vehicles as part of their efforts to curb air pollution include Milan, Beijing, Rome, Bogota, and New Delhi.