LaVanguardia this week reported that the Catalan government's environment councillor was considering taking all cars over 10 years old off the streets in order to reduce the amount of pollution in the city. This follows close on the heels of the pan-Spain blanket reduction of the maximum speed limit from 120 to 110 kph (against the wishes of the Catlalan government by the way) . As always with improve-the world political announcements I'm tempted to see who stands to gain. In this case-as usual- it's the politicians.
Pollution of any kind is an always an emotive issue and easy to win sympathy from. List a few statistics, post a couple of bar graphs, use phrases like 'increase in... mention sickness or death, and, walaahi, your political party (the one in power and making the decisions) gets praise and votes. Forcibly remove old cars and newer model sales rocket and stimulate both the second-hand and new car markets. Again politically good with increased votes and party funding from business concerns selling cars. Alternative energy cars will also get a boost too at a time when the government needs to be seen doing their bit for Europe and the world. Publish a few more figures showing how things are improving environment-wise and those lost votes from owners who had to dump their old cars will return.
The main reason why the idea will never bear fruit - and was never meant to - is that there are too many imponderables. Too many oh-we-never-thought-about-thats. For starters who is going to do the culling? Will it be the police who will pull motorists over and then tow away the old cars? Or will it be the itv car- testing centres who will make the decision about a car's road-worthiness? But they do this anyway! And what about commercial vehicles, the less cared-for, high mileage vehicles? Isn't that where most of the pollution on city roads comes from?
Basically what we have here is a carefully leaked bit of emotive propaganda which will never be put into practice let alone take off. The leak was made to show the public that the goverment cares about environmental things and is thinking about taking radical steps. Maybe. But wouldn't it be far better to prune everyone off using cars at all in the city. Charge cars to enter the city like London and Singapore do. Create more bike paths and improve public transport. Park and Ride schemes. Multi-occupancy vehicles rewarded. These would be the ways to go for a really forward-thinking, citizen-considering political party. Show role-models from the Barca team on TV riding their bikes to Camp Nou. Now there would be an example to follow. Ojala!
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