Budapest – This will be the situation if diesel cars will be banned!

If the Municipal Assembly decides to ban diesel cars in certain zones, that would affect 30% of Budapest’s drivers. Based on last year’s registrations in Pest county, numerically, it would mean 373,000 diesel cars out of the total 1.2 million. According to the expert, diesel-powered vehicles should not be chosen as the ’scapegoat’ of environmental pollution. Neither campaigning against diesel cars, nor introducing congestion charge would resolve the situation. One solution might be the development of the P&R system, reported Világgazdaság.

Based on last year’s results, the regulation would concern 373,000 diesel cars in the region of Budapest. Furthermore, trend changes should also be taken into consideration, as the prohibition is planned to be realised within the next five years. Despite the fact that the usage of diesel-powered vehicles shows a slightly growing tendency, petrol cars are still dominating the roads by 59%. Accordingly, it would be a mistake to blame only diesel-powered cars for environmental pollution.

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According to Róbert Szabó, the chief editor of Autó-Motor, the introduction of a congestion fee in Budapest would be hypocritical.

The expert thinks that the best solution for traffic control and the reduction of air pollution is the development of the P+R system. He also pointed out that the increasing number of green cars can also aggravate the problem in the long run.

“The energy of electric vehicles needs to be produced somewhere. It is only one part of the process that local emission is zero, but at the end of the charging cables, coal power plants in the Ruhr region emit huge amounts of smoke. A diesel car produces 100 units of contaminant due to battery production, while this amount is 122 in the case of hybrid vehicles,” they emphasised.