I thought this might be handy to note for anyone planning a trip for next year onwards: any city with more than 50K residents will be bringing in low emission zones to their city centers, and the existing zones for Madrid and Barcelona are going to be tightened (though by how much is yet to be seen due to court cases over it).

Under the Spanish classification scheme the vehicles affected are likely to be diesels from before 2006 and anything that burns petrol from before 2000 ("unclassified"). "B" class might be affected too, which is 2006-2014 for diesels and 2000-2006 for petrol.

I don't know how this will affect foreign plated vehicles, and the exact rules are going to vary a lot ... to confuse matters there are exceptions too, like my '93 Nissan Serena is classed as a B because it's officially a minibus.

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FreeBSD fan since before it was cool ...

I think we will see this increasingly around the world which will require travellers to consider the age of their vehicles more carefully, it is part of the reason I sold my old airhead BMWs last year and bought a new royal Enfield.

Just another reason to avoid cities.

And Western Europe perhaps

There is nothing more miserable than driving or riding through a busy city in any country.

It's always nicer to stay in the quiet and cheaper outskirts and take public transport in to visit.

I'm all for cities being 100% pedestrianised. They're dirty, noisy and smelly enough without traffic and fumes.

Although I can see this being a problem if you can't get to a ferry or shipper etc.

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Did some trips.
Rode some bikes.
Fix them for a living.
Can't say anymore.

stupid laws and regulation in the end will have to end someday. If you don't want me to visit your city and leave some money no problem I will visit another. We will see who will be sorry in the end.

The cities have done the calculations and decided they are better off without you and your money.

Good on them. They are making better places to live.

No they aren't.

Leeds wants such a zone. I plan to leave anyway but this will speed things up. You need to sell before property prices crash . The result will be a shell populated by those too old or too lazy to get out. Working people don't have the time to faff about with peasant wagons, you can't carry tools on a bicycle, the taxes for daring to reject the collective will be insane . The woke elite will follow as endless coffee shops can no longer recruit staff and the new parks are taken over by druggies. They will of course finally be able to achieve their long term aim and change the cities name to Leningrad.

I haven't set foot in the current traffic managed zone for ten years. Better to travel 10+ miles the other way. How good for St. Gretas agenda is that?

Andy

Ummm, yes, well. Lots of pedestrian-only zones and lots of limited-engine zones in the world. No doubt some have caused inconvenience and property price crashes, but others I'm familiar with have been wildly successful for residents and businesses. Somehow there are always ways to get tools and materials where they need to be, and---miracle of miracles--very often such areas are not overrun by the "old" or "lazy," much less "druggies."

References to St. Greta or Leningrad don't really advance the discussion much. Why not engage on the merits and drawbacks, and leave the shopworn clichés behind?

I agree that localities considering these sorts of zones have already factored in the likelihood they'll never see some of us again. They don't seem too alarmed about that, so neither am I.

Ok, couple of points to make:

The Barcelona low emission zone specifically goes around the port and airport, so shipping is unaffected, other cities will be avoiding ports too.

Spain's cities are the most densely populated in Europe, and as such health problems from pollution are also the most severe. We also have a large number of very old vehicles compared to wealthier nations, which only makes things worse.

Many people who live here are keen to reduce the amount of tourism because it's a poisoned chalice causing a lot of harm for comparatively little benefit - of course, that's not necessarily the case in other cities that are less internationally famous.

From my point of view, this is going to cost me a lot of money but I'm happy to pay it to try and make the world a better place. I'll be scrapping my old Euro2 CBF within the next 2 years and will then use my Euro4 Rieju until I can afford a fully electric bike.

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FreeBSD fan since before it was cool ...

The other week I drove my old, barely euro3 or 2 or whatever diesel van from the south of Spain to Barcelona, in order to take a ferry to Italy and beyond. The Google Maps app I was navigating by warned me I would drive through a bit of the clean air zone. Then the main highway was blocked due to an accident, so I decided to divert even more into said zone in order reach the port that is right in the middle of downtown BCN.

I made my ship on time. Nobody stopped me. Nobody reacted negatively towards me, except some d!ck in an incredibly shiney looking luxury motor who seem surprised that I was asserting the fact I did have priority as per the signage and morally too because "might is right", as anyone who has driven in India knows Deep down I think he was also impressed at my ability to simultaneously drive a rusty old vehicle and use verbal and non verbal estuary English

As has been said by others, I too loath cities and especially riding on them. I'm also culturally utterly dyslexic, so there's nothing there to see The average age of my exclusively carburettored fleet of 2 wheeled vehicles is around 24 years, so I'll stick to Castillan/ Catalan/ Basque rural areas and mountains.

PS. I did enjoy cities and towns like Sevilla and Ronda because it was warm and virtually tourist-free, it being winter and allegedly cold. Concrete jungles and their ancillary winnabagos like on the Costa del Sol coast were grim, but inland in the hills it was bliss as motorcycles are made for them and campervans most definitely aren't.

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Brighty's website: TheBrightStuffDotCom

CURRENT RR WITH REGULAR UPDATES: The Wife Takes on Chlamydia: A South American Retrospective

Sorry - you're victim of their propaganda.
FYI producing electricity and batteries creates more pollution then all combustion engines together. Diesels are today cleaner then gasoline cars, besides passengers cars are not the most polluting source. Heavy industry is.
Guess what the really reach people drive or fly - Jets, choppers, diesel and gasoline big limousines and SUVs. All that green BS is for poor mass...

Same here with Oxford. They've made it almost impossible to get to by car - unless you're a tourist with no time issues, in which case the park and ride scheme works well. But as you say, you can't carry tools on a bus. The cynic in me says they're trying to keep the 'town' out of the 'gown' areas so our future leaders don't have to mix with the common herd at any point at all other than the coach loads of admiring and well heeled foreign visitors that prop up the city's economy. If the council said they were going to build a wall round the place I don't think it would come as any surprise. All of this is justified on anti pollution grounds but the other three comparable conurbations in the area don't have any similar rules and seem to get on fine.

I'm down in the Grenoble area of France quite often and there's a substantial anti pollution zone in place there. Your car (not sure about bikes) has to be classified and categorised, and an appropriate sticker mounted on the windscreen. Thats been the case for a few years now and we've dutifully spent our €5 on stickers for the various vehicles we use. But I've never seen it enforced. I've been there summer and winter and never had an issue. If they're doing it by camera then they must be invisible. You'd think that riding through the city on a smoky old two stroke would have alarms going off everywhere but nothing has ever happened. I've wondered whether having the zone in place looks good on Grenoble's social tick list but actually enforcing it has an unacceptable economic price. Voters want to feel proud of their city's 'progressive agenda' but draw the line at it actually costing them money.

I know, I’ve been helping with the campaign for it (and the GALBA work against expansion of Leeds Bradford Airport)

Rachel, of Yeadon.

Now on Toytown Airport we agree. Should be closed, or turned back into a flying club, not because of green rubbish but because its hopeless. It was another Kremlin vanity scheme. They took over an airfield built to have the worst possible conditions for training purposes that was already isolated from any transport infrastructure by urbanisation. That's why it's a total lottery if your flight back will be cancelled. Better to drive to Manchester or Birmingham and know that's where you'll be coming back to. I've pretty much banned my team from using it. No point planning meetings while one of them is on a slow coach from Gatwick to pick up her car at Toytown.

Andy

Given that I'm an automotive engineer, I'd love to see your very legitimate sources on these assertions.

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FreeBSD fan since before it was cool ...

Don't hold your breath on that one. One thing that the anti-electric brigade always fail to factor in is that the materials in batteries are recyclable - virtually limitless numbers of times - and they are being recycled. It just doesn't fir their narrative.

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You will have to do without pocket handkerchiefs, and a great many other things, before we reach our journey's end, Bilbo Baggins. You were born to the rolling hills and little rivers of the Shire, but home is now behind you. The world is ahead.