Paris, the city of romance ... and smog

This month Paris authorities ordered a halt to fires and forced half the cars off the road as part of emergency measures triggered by a spike in air pollution. Photo / AP

Pollution is forcing cars off the road, raising fears over health and causing headaches for French politicians, writes Catherine Field

By late March, the French capital shakes off its winter torpor as warmer weather awakens the flowers, and the museums, monuments and cafes gear up for their role as the backdrop of Paris, the eternal city of romance.

But this year, racing pulses, heavy breathing and weepy eyes have had little to do with the turbulence of love. Pollution, rather, is to blame. Paris in the springtime of 2015 has become Paris in the smog.

A week-long pollution alert has triggered worries about health risks for the elderly and those with respiratory problems and, for one day, forced half the cars off the road. It has also spurred angry squabbles about how a paradisal city came to be included in the same wheezy breath as urban purgatories such as Beijing, New Delhi and Shanghai.

To the outsider, bracketing beautiful Paris alongside Asia's befouled mega-cities may seem daft. The common image of Paris is of the Eiffel Tower beneath an azure sky, and the Sacre-Coeur rising above the pristine cobbled streets of Montmartre. The city has no heavy industry and environmental awareness is high, from rubbish recycling to noise abatement and recharging points for electric vehicles. It has a fine public transport system, including a new and expanding tramway, has popular schemes to rent bikes or electric cars by the hour, and is seeking to tame traffic with low-speed streets and pedestrian zones.

But - and this is something that the tourist brochures won't tell you - the city has a grubby secret. Paris lies in a basin, with fast-growing suburbs on its outskirts connected by a network of motorways. Compared with New Zealand towns, car use is low, but most of the vehicles are diesels, which many people bought under a now-discredited incentive to support the French auto industry.

Their emissions add to those from homes, light industry and offices burning fossil fuels, and seasonal dust from farmers tilling the dry March soil. Most times the muck is blown away, but high-pressure systems and windless weather can also combine to act like a lid sitting on top of the bowl - and a witches' brew develops.

This is what happened last week. In a series of grim daily bulletins, Airparif, the city's air monitoring agency, warned that levels of ultra-fine soot and dust called PM10 breached a threshold of 50 micrograms per cubic metre. PM10 stands for particulate matter with a diameter of less than 10 millionths of a metre, and is able to reach into the lungs, causing respiratory and cardiac distress for the vulnerable. As the coughing and yawking mounted under the thickening pall, the city fought with the national Government about what to do.

Facing off were two leading lights of the Socialist Party - Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo, who runs the capital in alliance with the ecologists, and Ecology Minister Segolene Royal, a party heavyweight and former partner of President Francois Hollande. After a tug of war during which she asked motorists to "do their civic duty" and not drive, Royal buckled to Hidalgo's pressure and ordered a partial ban on cars, which with free public transport would seek to ease the leaden pall.

On Monday, only cars and two-wheelers whose licence plate ended with an odd number were allowed into the city from 5.30am until midnight. Cars with even-number plates and heavy trucks were banned. Taxis, commercial vans and first-responder services were permitted to take to the streets, as were electric vehicles, hybrids and cars with more than three people. The city mobilised 750 police at around 100 checkpoints, empowering them to issue fines of 22 ($31.50) to violators. Police issued more than 6200 penalties, but often took pity on drivers who said they were ignorant of the restrictions, and allowed them to double back without being punished.

It was only the third time in 18 years that the measure had been implemented. By Tuesday, normal traffic returned as a drizzle eased the haze. But it did nothing to dampen a political storm about whether the ban had had any effect, the 10 million cost of the free transport and what should be done in the future.

In the firing line is Royal, whom greens deride as a technocrat who plays for time in the face of tough decision or backs down when powerful lobbies raise their voice. Last year, Royal scrapped a planned "eco-tax" on trucks - a U-turn that cost 403 million in compensation to the company that built tollgates to collect the levy - and reversed a proposed ban on wood-burning stoves in Paris, a fashion among the capital's bourgeois-bohemians that is blamed for much of the particulate problem in winter.

"What happened this week was a classic example of a government mess. It took the authorities almost a week to take the necessary measures," said the Paris region's leading conservative, former minister Valerie Pecresse, who vowed to push through legislation enabling local government to bar traffic if pollution peaks dangerously.

Royal's defenders point to a bill, which she hopes will become law by mid-year, to make traffic regulation easier with a "green disc" to enable low- or zero-polluting cars to take the road at any time. The law will also create zones where traffic is restricted if the area is vulnerable to pollution buildup.

Paris City Council, though, says this is not nearly enough. It says that from July 1, it will ban trucks and buses built before 2001 from its streets during daytime. From July 1, 2016, the ban will extend to all vehicles made before 1997.

Three environment groups have taken a legal path, filing a lawsuit against persons unknown for criminal negligence - a move that requires a formal investigation.

Nadir Saifi, deputy head of one of the plaintiffs, Ecology without Borders, pointed the finger at "the mafioso trio - the state, car makers and oil companies".

"Nobody does anything, the authorities wait for the wind to blow again and expect drivers to reduce their speed," Saifi told Le Figaro. "It's now time for the justice system to intervene and establish the chain of responsibility. The implications are enormous."