The heads of municipal financial administration will be particularly pleased about this: during nationwide controls in four cities, around 15,000 violations against the imposed driving bans were discovered. The fines issued amount to an estimated total of 1.6 million euros – impressive figures that make you pay attention.
Given these figures and sums, will other cities also be tempted to introduce environmental zones? At the request of the German Press Agency (Deutsche Presse-Agentur - dpa), the highest number of infringements was recorded in the municipalities of Darmstadt and Stuttgart. So far, the Rhine-Neckar metropolis is the only city in the Federal Republic of Germany in which driving restrictions on older diesel vehicles apply throughout the entire city. In Darmstadt, as well as in the cities of Hamburg and Berlin, transit is only prohibited on certain streets. Stuttgart, for example, registered a total of 2943 violations in the period from April to December 2019 – since April, vehicles from Stuttgart were also affected by the restrictions, which previously applied only to foreign vehicles.
In the future, such news will make local authorities think twice before continuing to reject the introduction of environmental zones and the associated business model: money makes the world and the environmental zones go round.
How will the situation evolve? We can be excited about it.....