DPA
After-work traffic on the Leipziger Straße in Berlin.
Soon, many diesel owners in the capital have no more free ride: A court has decided that Berlin by mid-2019 diesel bans on several roads must introduce. At least eleven road sections are affected.
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Berlin has to impose a diesel driving ban for several streets until mid-2019. This was decided by the administrative court of the capital on Tuesday. The judges obliged the Senate Department for Transport to issue a tightened air pollution control plan with the relevant regulations by 31 March 2019. According to the decision, the driving restrictions for at least eleven road sections must be implemented by the end of June 2019 at the latest.
By blocking eleven heavily loaded sections of major roads, it is intended to ensure that the limit value for pollutant nitrogen dioxide is complied with. Diesel cars are a major cause of bad air in cities. The driving bans issued by the court concern diesel cars and diesel trucks.
These include parts of the important Leipziger Straße and Friedrichstraße in the center of Berlin. For other sections with a total length of another 15 kilometers, the state of Berlin must also check driving bans. The verdict is not yet legally binding.
Driving bans for entire environmental zone not required by the judges
“Mandatory measures” should not be postponed on the grounds that the results of further investigations are to be awaited, argued the presiding judge. The Berlin Senate had already initiated measures for better air, for example Tempo 30 zones.
Judge Ulrich Marticke said at the same time that a diesel driving ban for the entire environmental zone, which covers large parts of the city center, was not absolutely necessary. Because in many places in the environmental zone, the limits would be respected.
Like many other German cities, Deutsche Umwelthilfe had sued. She spoke after the verdict of a “good day for clean air”. Originally, the environmental aid wanted to enforce a diesel driving ban in the Berlin environmental zone. Only a ban in one zone would avoid avoidance traffic to other roads where the burden would then increase.
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Environmental Aid Director Jürgen Resch criticized that the federal government had failed with its diesel compromise. The grand coalition had agreed on measures such as buying incentives for new cars for 14 particularly polluted cities – but Berlin is not included in this list, for example. Resch demanded a new “diesel summit” of the Federal Government, in which also environmental associations would have to sit at the table.
The question now is whether the decision will change the course of the German government in the diesel crisis. After a long struggle, the grand coalition had agreed on new measures to prevent driving bans. New purchase incentives and technical retrofits target 14 particularly polluted cities such as Munich and Stuttgart. Especially when retrofitting but many questions are still open.
Car buyers are not too pleased with the agreed measures. This shows a recent survey of the car buying website Carwow among 700 new car prospects. 58.1 percent of respondents said they were dissatisfied with the results of the “diesel summit”. Only a fifth of respondents were satisfied with the agreed measures.
However, there were no clear favorites for better steps than those recently decided. When asked which of three measures would be the best solution for the diesel debate, the views were fairly even: the buyback of diesel models favored 35.6 percent, 33.1 percent of the 700 respondents favored a diesel exchange premium. Just under a third, exactly 31.3 percent, argued for hardware retrofits.
wed / dpa-AFX