Source: Eltis 26 October 2020 – The COVID-19 pandemic has made many people rethink how cities should be used. Urban vehicle access regulations (UVARs) across Europe are changing, with a focus on cleaner air and fewer cars.

Since 1 November 2020, Amsterdam has banned Euro 3 passenger cars from entering its low emission zone, situated within its A10 ring road. By 2022, lorries entering the zone will have to be at least Euro 6, whilst buses and coaches will need to be zero emission. By 2025 all vehicles entering this zone will need to be zero emission, except private cars. The current plan is for cars to be zero emission by 2030 at which point Amsterdam hopes to have an entirely emission free zone for all vehicles. Denmark, the French city of Grenoble and cities in northern Italy are also tightening their respective low emission zone restrictions.

Several cities across Europe have recently introduced new low emission zones. From 1 January 2023, the whole of the Belgian Walloon region will become low emission zone, while the German city of Stuttgart has started enforcing Euro 6 since October 2020. In France, seven cities are looking to implement new low emission zones as of 2021.

A new EU project, UVAR Box, aims to help road users keep up with the changing access regulations across Europe. The project aims to provide tools to structure data on UVARs in machine readable format that can be used in mobile applications, fleet management tools and navigation devices.

For more in-depth information see https://urbanaccessregulations.eu.

• Photo by Gary Butterfield on Unsplash.