Krakow low-emission zone

This autumn, Krakow authorities voted in favour of establishing Low Emission Zone (LEZ) in the city, as the first zone in Poland. The zone will cover the whole city and will introduce the following restrictions. Since March 2023 all newly registered cars will have to be at least Euro 3 for petrol and Euro 5 for Diesel to be admitted to the zone. Since July 2024 all cars driving in Krakow will have to be Euro 1 for petrol and Euro 2 for Diesel (regardless of the registration date). This is a very lenient restriction, and its aim is rather to educate the public that there is an LEZ in Krakow and prepare people for the next step. Since July 2026 all cars driving in Krakow will have to be at least Euro 3 for petrol and Euro 5 for diesel (regardless of the registration date). This will result in significant air quality improvement.

The results of the remote emission sensing campaign carried out by the CARES project, together with a previous RES campaign, provided important information to the decision and played a significant role of the whole process.

Anna Dworakowska from Polish Smog Alert emphasizes that “Thanks to RES we were able to point to those groups of cars that need to be covered by restrictions and to estimate the share of cars that will not meet LEZ requirements. In short, RES gave Krakow authorities all the necessary data to develop knowledge-based decisions. Without the RES data it would be very difficult to design an LEZ.