Wacky Wednesday: Socialist Mayor of Paris Wants to Ban Older Cars, Trucks, and Motorcycles from City

Now that the election is over, Wacky Wednesday returns for more, well… wackiness.

Driving in Paris is an interesting experience – so I have been told – especially around the Arc de Triomphe (you thought DuPont Circle was bad!).  Parking is even tougher.  Not surprisingly, the city is pretty harsh on cars, too.  Cities such as London instituted a congestion charge to drive into the center of town but Paris’ mayor, Socialist Bertrand Delanoê, wants to one up his London counterpart: he wants to ban any car older than 17 years (18 years for trucks and pre-2004 motorcycles) from driving in Paris.

The reason, he claims, is to cut down on emissions.

According to England’s Telegraph:

Fabien Breuvart, the proud owner of a silver 1990 Renault 4L asked: “Is this mayor really Left-wing?”

The plan would “exclude the poorest people from driving in the capital” and turn Paris into an “island for the rich”, he told Le Parisien newspaper.

The Socialists insisted they would introduce “social” measures to help families and businesses update vehicles, including state subsidies to scrap old cars for new ones – a move experts dubbed unrealistic given the huge cost of such a measure at a time of austerity.

There are other moves afoot as well including a plan to track, and charge, truck drivers using Paris’ Périphérique (the circular highway that surrounds Paris) and by cutting the speed limit on the road from 50mph to 43mph.

Like all good Leftists, the automobile is seen as the devil’s work:

The ban is the latest in Mr Delanoë’s war on “the hegemony of the automobile” that has seen him introduce trams, bike and bus lanes and the popular cycle rental scheme. In the past year, he has launched Autolib’, the electric car rental system and begun pedestrianising stretches of road along the banks of the Seine.

Leftists hate the car because it spoils their love of Collectivism and for the need to impose hegemonic order on everybody.  People driving around in cars create mess… traffic, accidents, congestion, disorder… all those things that are caused by individuals doing what they want, how they want, when they want.

Better to make everybody follow a train schedule.

I successfully lived in Paris for two years without owning a car but the air, especially in July and August, is simply wretched and that’s mostly because gasoline is taxed much higher than diesel is so most people use that and it burns much dirtier than anything else.

Keeping older cars out of Paris will only hurt the people who can’t afford to buy new cars and trying to prevent all trucks from driving in and around the city will simply make products more expensive, which will also hurt the poor.

And the mayor is a Socialist?

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