Diesel vehicles older than Euro 6 emissions standards will be banned from certain parts of Hamburg as of May 31.
Cars and trucks with pre-2014 diesel engines and exhaust systems not Euro 6 compliant will be forbidden in a half-kilometre section of Max Brauer Allee toward Altona station, and trucks over 3.5 tonnes will be blocked from a 1.6km stretch of the “Stresemannstrasse” main road.
Only about 116,000 Euro 6 diesel cars will be allowed in the exclusion zone out of Hamburg’s approximate 330,000 total diesel passenger car population.
Public transport buses will be exempt from the exclusion zones, however low-emission buses will be “preferred in future” in the Allee.
Further, Heidelberg mayor Eckart Wuerzner announced only zero-emission vehicles would be permitted in the town’s centre by 2030, if approved by local council.
Hamburg’s environment and energy department says motorists whose destination is inside the exclusion zone will be permitted.
Authorities will conduct random checks and penalise diesel car drivers A$38.00 / NZ$42.00 (€25) and truck drivers A$116 / NZ$126.
The action arrives after a watershed German court decision that would allow local government restrictions on permitted diesel vehicle use.
In 2017, 65 German cities breached their permitted levels of deadly nitrogen dioxide (NOx), including Stuttgart which was roughly double the 40 micrograms per cubic metre rules set in 2010.
According to the German Motor Vehicle Agency (KBA), since the Volkswagen Dieselgate emissions cheating revelations in September 2015, the country’s new diesel car sales have plummeted from 46.8% to just 33.3% as of January 1, 2018.
In Bergisch Gladbach, Germany, University of Applied Sciences’ director of the Center of Automotive Management, Stefan Bratzel, says consumers are increasingly reluctant to pick diesel now.
“We’re witnessing the creeping death of diesel,” Bloomberg reports him as saying.
“If you’re a private car buyer, it’s very hard to pick diesel. The insecurity is growing.”
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