The EELV president of the Métropole de Lyon Bruno Bernard announced on Tuesday "the relaxation" of the timetable for the implementation of the low emission zone (ZFE) of the agglomeration and "the overhaul" of his project of extension. Created in 2020, this zone should eventually exclude the most polluting vehicles, including those running on diesel.
As initially planned, "the ban on Crit'Air 4 and 3 private vehicles will be effective on January 1, 2024 and January 1, 2025. On the other hand, Crit'Air 2, which were normally excluded from the central perimeter (Lyon, Villeurbanne and Caluire , Ed) on January 1, 2026, will still be able to drive until January 1, 2028 ”, explained to AFP the elected official, confirming information from the weekly Tribune de Lyon.
"We need the acceptability of as many people as possible, from the economic community to mayors and citizens", underlined the president of the Metropolis, whose ZFE, in its current form, had caused the dissatisfaction of some of the elected officials and the population because of the speed with which it was set up and some of its restrictions.
Initially limited to heavy goods vehicles and light commercial vehicles classified Crit'Air 5, 4 and 3 or unclassified, this ZFE excludes since January private vehicles Crit'Air 5 and unclassified - the most polluting.
Crit'Air 4 and 3 and 2 were to be gradually banned from 2024 to allow only Crit'Air 1, with exemptions for two years for the most modest households. A radical attitude of which the Lyonnais do not yet measure the consequences on their daily life.
In addition, Mr. Bernard indicated on Tuesday that the project to extend the ZFE to municipalities in eastern Lyon, which was to be submitted to the vote of the metropolitan council in March, would be "revisited" and its final perimeter determined. using a "scientific observatory". The project must be proposed in June to the metropolitan council.
"We are going to give ourselves three more months to discuss with the different groups, so that the June deliberation is as shared as possible," said the environmentalist official, who castigated the state's lack of communication on the EPZs.
"The state has to live up to the obligation it has given us" for EPZs, he said. "If there is no national communication, we will have a lot of trouble," he added.
"Favorable" to the EPZ, but not in its latest form, opposition metropolitan councilors reacted cautiously to these announcements on Tuesday.
"It's pretty much going in the right direction. If there is real collective work, if our remarks are taken into account, fine. Otherwise, we will draw conclusions,” centrist Christophe Geourjon told AFP. Except that the least favored households will have been hit without delay by the ban on Crit'Air 3 and more, without any schedule adjustment.
If his LR counterpart, the mayor of Caluire-et-Cuire (Rhône) Philippe Cochet, recognizes a "first shift", he considered that Mr. Bernard was first and foremost a "strategist" in electoral matters.
"He realized that the removal of the Crit'Air 2 was going to happen in the year of the municipal election" as well as the metropolitan elections, in 2026, he noted, while referring to a harsh poll, at the beginning of February, on the action of the mayor EELV of Lyon Grégory Doucet at mid-term.
According to this study by Ipsos for the magazine Lyon Mag, 67% of Lyonnais are unhappy (including 41% very unhappy).
To date, eleven metropolises, the first of which were Lyon, Grenoble and Paris, have their ZFEs with different timetables. A generalization in France of these zones is provided for by law by 2025 in the 43 agglomerations of more than 150,000 inhabitants.
