The air in Paris has been as bad as some of the worst cities in the world recently. Strange as it may sound, it presents a huge opportunity.

According to the BBC, the air in Paris has been as bad as some of the worst cities in the world. At least at the moment. Due to unfavourable weather conditions of recent, particulate matter has accumulated in the air.



Car ban in central Paris

Officials have acted quickly with remedial policy measures including restricting driving (using the alternating licence plate method similar to Mexico City) as well as providing free public transit. Considering the majority of Parisian motorists use deisel fueled cars, the impact could be huge.

Policies working

And it was. On Friday March 14th, Paris had higher levels of air pollution than places like Shanghai and New Delhi. But with the new policies, air quality improved more than 3-fold over the weekend. Perhaps results were partially affected by changing weather, but the drop remains impressive. As an added affect, congestion is also down by 60%.

Once in a century opportunity

It’s rare a city of this size has a politically supportable reason to ban cars. While likely temporary, officials have an opportunity to research the impacts with actual data from their own city. Most regions would need to undertake speculative studies for years only to come up with unproven predictions. And then, for years, they would have to promote these predictions to a skeptical public convinced their city is different than those studied. Not Paris. They can look at what is actually occurring in their own back yard. Stockholm is a rare example of a city that was able to test impacts of a congestion charge. They introduced one, then removed it. Then, they reintroduced it again due to public demand.

Paris has a rare opportunity to re-frame their severe air pollution problem into a progressive pilot project. A pilot project otherwise nearly impossible to approve in normal circumstances. Will this be the case? Or will it just be another band-aid solution with little long term value?

Video – Pollution Alert hits Maximum in Paris

[Sources / literature: BBC, International Business Times, The Atlantic Cities]