For the past week, the inhabitants of the Metropolis of Lyon (Rhône) have been going through their first winter pollution peak and have complied with differentiated traffic.
Pollution with very fine particles, "the most dangerous, those which penetrate to the pulmonary alveoli, pass into the blood and are likely to cause cancer", specifies Marie-Blanche Personnaz, CEO of Atmo Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes , the air quality observatory.
A particularly worrying situation in Lyon, "which experienced 42 days of pollution episodes in 2019, and the year 2020 should be barely less", warns Marie-Blanche Personnaz.
The origin of these particles with worrying health effects?
“They come from wood-burning systems, but above all from diesel vehicles,” she says.
While fine particle pollution (less than 10 microns) tends to decrease over the last decade, this is not the case for ultra-fine particles (less than 2.5 microns), the most harmful.
To reduce this pollution, the Lyon metropolis has already set up, in 2020, a ZFE (Low Emission Zone) including the cities of Lyon, Villeurbanne, Caluire, and partially Vénissieux, banning heavy goods vehicles and utility vehicles.
In January, this will be further strengthened.
But Bruno Bernard, the new environmental president of the Metropolis, who makes air quality the top priority of his mandate, now wants to move up a gear.
Unprecedented efforts
Thus, by 2025, he wants to expand the ZFE to a maximum of municipalities, but also to individuals, by purely and simply banning diesel on the territory.
A first in France, and even in Europe on a metropolitan scale.
"This is an absolute priority, explains Bruno Bernard, recalling that air pollution kills 50,000 people in France every year".
The site, unprecedented, promises to be colossal, since it involves convincing the 70% of motorists who run on diesel, i.e. 400,000 cars, to convert, within five years, to electric or gasoline, or even abandon their car.
"Do not buy diesel cars anymore, because they are the most polluting vehicles": this is the message that Bruno Bernard will begin to send to his constituents.
To convince them, he highlights the unprecedented efforts that will be put in place to develop the public transport offer, the establishment of free access for the most modest, but also the practice of cycling and walking. .
Then the aid that will come for the poorest households.
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In the meantime, he begins to meet, one by one, the 59 mayors of the municipalities of the Metropolis to convince them to enter the perimeter of this future ZFE.
"They are currently rather receptive," he says.
And urges the government to accelerate the change of legislation which will allow the establishment of an automatic registration plate control system, facilitating the verbalization of diesel vehicles, those of the inhabitants of the Metropolis as those coming from outside .