With more than 150,000 inhabitants, the metropolis of Brest also had to pass through. But it was not ready, after a year 2024 when the community's services were particularly requested for the organization of early legislative elections, Maritime Festivals or even the 50th anniversary of the metropolis.
A regulatory consultation in February
This Wednesday, January 22, 2025, Brest Métropole communicated the scope which will be presented for deliberation at the next Metropolitan Council on Friday, January 31. Subsequently, a regulatory consultation phase is scheduled from February 12 to March 7, 2025. Then, the community will be able to take into account any comments and choose to introduce dampening measures (exemptions, progressiveness of the ban, etc.) to the owners concerned, knowing that the entry into force of the ZFE is scheduled for April 2025, and exclusively during peak hours, Monday to Friday (from 7:30 a.m. to 9 p.m., 12 p.m. to 2 p.m. and 4:30 p.m. to 7 p.m.).
Heavy goods vehicles, buses and 1,080 cars affected
From this date, private cars registered before 1997 (“1,080 cars, or around 1% of the vehicle fleet”, according to Yohann Nédélec, vice-president for mobility) will be affected by the restrictions, but also light utility vehicles registered before September 30, 1997 (around 250 vehicles), and finally heavy goods vehicles, buses and coaches (around twenty).
However, numerous individual exemptions are provided: 24-hour ZFE-m pass allowing you to travel within the perimeter without penalty, collector's vehicles, specific professional vehicles or even delivery times for the acquisition of a new vehicle, etc.
Avoid penalizing the most modest
The law requires that the zoning of the ZFE covers at least 50% of the population of the EPCI (public intermunicipal cooperation establishment) concerned. Brest metropolis with 214,000 inhabitants, it was therefore necessary to define a perimeter encompassing at least 107,000 people. A first choice was already known: that of circumscribing the perimeter to the city of Brest alone, within a belt going roughly from Fort Montbarey to the bottom of the road to Quimper, via Boulevard de l'Europe . The commercial port and the military port are excluded. Just like the structuring axes, RD205 and Boulevard de l'Europe.
-But if the ZFEs aim for virtuous objectives for public health, the community is hardly enthusiastic about this system which will penalize the poorest and accentuate social inequalities. This would explain why it chose to further tighten the perimeter, excluding the priority districts of Bellevue and Pontanézen.
Brest Métropole thus ensures that it has taken into account “the social dimension of these two districts in order to protect people with modest incomes who may have difficulty complying with the restrictions imposed by the ZFE”, when making its decisions.
Practical
The consultation will be open via the website jeparticipe.brest.fr or via paper forms at the Hôtel de métropole, at 24 rue Coat-ar-Guéven, from Monday to Friday from 8 a.m. to 6:30 p.m.
