French Suburbs Join Paris in Diesel Ban

"A large group of suburban municipalities agreed to ban all diesel-fueled cars built before 2000 inside the A86 Beltway, starting in July," Feargus O'Sullivan reports in CityLab. "In 2025, this will be upgraded to a ban on all diesel vehicles from before 2010, plus a ban on more polluting gasoline-powered cars built before 2006."

The ban will remove an expected 118,000 vehicles from the road, and is notable for the sheer ground it covers: 

The communes that worked together to forge Monday's agreement contain collectively more than twice the population of the official city. By covering the A86 highway, it also affects drivers passing through the area from elsewhere in France—drivers of older diesel cars will now be pushed out to another beltway that skirts the Paris metro area almost entirely. 

Also notable is that the ban was adopted by 79 of the 131 communes in the Greater Paris area, which has previously resisted anti-pollution measures introduced by Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo—including a similar ban on diesel cars that will escalate in coverage until 2020.