“Our efforts have paid off”, reacts the mayor of Rouen, authorized to allow Crit’Air 3 vehicles to circulate beyond January 2025

Instead of banning, the municipality has chosen to increase and encourage alternatives to the car. A profitable choice, according to Nicolas Mayer Rossignol.

“Our efforts paid off”greets Wednesday March 20 on France Inter Nicolas Mayer Rossignol, socialist mayor of Rouen, one of the three metropolises authorized to allow Crit’Air 3 vehicles to circulate in their low-emission zones beyond January 1, 2025. The Minister of the Ecological Transition Christophe Béchu announced Tuesday that these traffic restrictions will only concern Paris and Lyon from next year, because Marseille, Strasbourg and Rouen fell below the regulatory air quality thresholds last year .

The president of the Rouen Normandy Metropolis underlines the fact that his city “was part of the territories where the air quality was not good”which represented “around 500 deaths each year linked to poor air quality”. Faced with this observation, cars “Crit’Air 4 and 5, that is to say the diesels before 2006, [étaient déjà] excluded” in Rouen, but without improvement in air quality, from January 2025, the Crit’Air 3 would in turn have been banned. This would have represented “almost one in three cars in total” and so “a social bomb”says Nicolas Mayer Rossignol.

Free transport on days of peak pollution or high traffic

The town hall therefore “implemented a very massive policy” in favor of “alternatives to the self-driving car”as “carpooling, public transport and bicycles”. Nicolas Mayer Rossignol is particularly pleased to have “increased the supply of public transport, free transport, including on days of peak pollution or high traffic such as Saturdays”. “Today, the results are there”, boasts the city councilor. He nevertheless recognizes that “the efforts are still not over”. He in fact reminds us that if “air quality has improved, it is far from perfect.”

But Nicolas Mayer Rossignol insists on the difficulties encountered in continuing these efforts to combat pollution. He maintains that town halls like his find themselves thus “stuck between the ecological, environmental and health issues and the social issue”. “We must find tools to move forward on improving air quality and allow, in particular, our fellow citizens who have the lowest incomes to be able to change their mode of travel or change vehicles”he pleads.

“We certainly need standards, which are necessary for health and ecological issues, but we also need much greater aid.”

Nicolas Mayer Rossignol, socialist mayor of Rouen

at France Inter

The mayor of Rouen particularly considers the social leasing system insufficient, the 2024 edition of which had to end after six weeks due to too much demand. “The national system is already closed, we can no longer use it and that’s where it’s not going well”, he regrets. Nicolas Mayer Rossignol therefore asks the government to give municipalities “the means to implement alternatives to the car”, “to help communities by providing financing and taxation to improve public transport”.