If the EU has its way then all cars will be banned from London all other cities across Europe by 2050. The bizarre move is part of the EU masterplan to cut CO2 emissions by 60 per cent over the next 40 years.
The proposal was unveiled on Monday by The European Commission. It comes as part of the “single European transport area” idea which is aimed at changing transport patterns for passengers by 2050.
The plan will also mean an end to cheap holiday flights from Britain to southern Europe if the target is met of over 50 per cent of all journeys above 186 miles are made by rail.
In a bid to drastically cut climate change emissions the EU has set a target of “zero” petrol and diesel-driven cars and lorries in the EU’s future cities.
The EU transport commission, Siim Kallas has spoken of how this new move combined with the new taxation of fuel would quite literally force people out of their cars and in search of “alternative” means of transport.
Kallas said that the move will see no more “conventionally fuelled cars in our city centres” and that “action will follow, legislation, real action to change behaviour.”
Whilst the EU seems to be embracing the idea, elsewhere The Association of British Drivers has branded the idea as “crazy.” They have rejected the proposal to ban cars and cited the idea as “economically disastrous.”
One spokesman for the BDA, Hugh Bladon went as far as to say of Mr Kallas: “I suggest that he goes and finds himself a space in the local mental asylum.”
“If he wants to bring everywhere to a grinding halt and to plunge us into a new dark age, he is on the right track. We have to keep things moving. The man is off his rocker.”
Mr Kallas has hit back at the allegations and has denied that the EU plan to cut car use by over half over the next 20 years, before a total ban in 2050, will limit personal mobility or in any way damage Europe’s economic competitiveness.
He said: “Curbing mobility is not an option, neither is business as usual.” He claimed that the proposal will be “win-win.”
Criticism of the idea has also come from Christopher Monckton, Ukip’s transport spokesman: “The EU must be living in an alternate reality, where they can spend trillions and ban people from their cars.”
References:
EU Commission
Bad idea?
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