Milan's Pollution Charge Gets Off to Smooth Start
Date: 03-Jan-08
Country: ITALY
Author: Sara Rossi
Several motorists complained about a scarcity of outlets selling the pass that allows entrance to the centre of the Italian financial capital and the council Web site allowing online payment collapsed on the eve of the launch.
Under the innovative "EcoPass" system cars will be charged up to 10 euros (US$14.7) per day, the graduated charge based on the amount of pollution a car's engine produces.
Launched as a one-year trial, the charge targets the 89,000 vehicles that each day clog the middle of the northern Italian city, where pollution readings often top European Union limits.
The charge is being billed as the first of its kind among European cities.
London, which took the lead when it introduced a flat-rate congestion charge in 2003, is preparing a pollution fee on lorries, buses and coaches entering its first "low-emission zone" from Feb. 4.
Other cities in Italy, home to motoring brands Fiat, Ferrari and Alfa Romeo, are taking steps to control smog stemming from one of the world's highest levels of car ownership.
Northern cities Turin and Genoa are considering the introduction of a pollution fee for their city centres while Rome will extend curbs on most-polluting vehicles from Jan. 10.
The real test of the Milan system will come next week when schools and businesses get back into full swing after the Christmas and New Year holiday.
"Traffic is 40 percent less than normal today," said Edoardo Croci, the city official behind the scheme.
"We could not have imagined a better start. Everything was quiet. We did not have the emergency our critics had imagined."
Croci said that about 80 percent of private cars which entered the city centre early on Wednesday did not have to pay as they were equipped with anti-smog filters and hence exempt.
Most new cars are exempt from the charge, while the owners of older, larger engine cars will pay the highest rate.
"We will reach our target if by year end we have data showing a reduction in pollution by 10 percent and in traffic by around 30 percent," Milan mayor Letizia Moratti told a news conference on Wednesday.
Critics of the tax say it is too complicated and looks more like a charge on the poor rather than on polluters.
"I do not know whether this will help to cut down Milan's high pollution levels...I only grasped one thing: wealthy people will not be affected," photographer-turned-publisher Inge Feltrinelli told Italian daily La Stampa.
"They all have cars with anti-pollution filters and will not pay a single euro cent," added Feltrinelli, who prides herself on using a bicycle to move around Milan's elegant inner streets.
(Reporting by Sara Rossi, Writing by Tiziana Barghini)