First heat wave and… first pollution peak. In Lyon (Rhône), where the orange alert for intense heat was triggered by Météo France, this is also the first opportunity for environmentalists to take action. Bruno Bernard, the new president of the metropolis, has decided to strike hard with the desire to drastically reduce car traffic and thus the emissions of fine particles, known to be carcinogenic. While, until now, the traffic reductions organized through Crit'Air vignettes only affected a maximum of 16% of the city's car fleet, Bruno Bernard wants to reach 300,000 of the 700,000 cars of the Metropolis, or 43% of the fleet carrying labels 3, 4, 5 and not classified which would remain immobilized in the future.
Here is for the urgency of a weekend which promises to be exceptionally hot and certainly polluted. A weekend of “dress rehearsal” in a way before the next peaks for which the ecologist wishes in the future to “anticipate” and not simply “manage”. "We must ban traffic as soon as the peak is announced and without waiting to be inside," he considers.
A punch measure that is not for tomorrow
Simple on paper, this punchy measure is actually complex to apply. We have to start getting it accepted and respected by the population. "We want the State to set up automatic reading of license plates", wrote Bruno Bernard to the prefect, who asked for a strengthening of police checks while waiting.
But above all, the measures he recommends to reduce traffic, and therefore fine particle pollution, is in reality a prefectural decision. Bruno Bernard has just made an urgent request to the prefect of the Rhône, Pascal Mailhos, who has shown himself to be "open to the process", without being able to put it in place this weekend or even in the medium term. "Applying it requires a modification of the framework decree" specifies the office of the prefect, "which will take several months".
Starting tomorrow, the prefect will still anticipate the peak of pollution, excluding 110,000 traffic labels 4, 5 and not classified. In these days of crossover on the vacation route, however, this does not concern diverted transit traffic on the eastern bypass, excluded from the perimeter.
The only solution for the president of the Lyon metropolitan area to more severely limit emergency traffic: make public transport free during the pollution peak, which has not yet been acted on. In the meantime, without being able to act on ozone pollution, the metropolis asks vulnerable people to stay at home, windows closed.
