Pico y Placa - One City's Novel Way to Reduce Pollution and Congestion

On a recent trip to Ecuador for vacation and to visit family I was impressed by what Quitenos refer to as "pico y placa" which is a law which mandates when a person can use their automobile. In essence "pico" refers to rush-hour (forget about the literal meaning of the word because if you look it up in a dictionary you'll just find that it means "beak") and "placa" is the license plate of a car (the English cognate is "plaque" which kind of makes sense to me anyway). The last digit of your plate number determines which day of the week you cannot use your car between the hours of 7 and 9:30AM and 4PM to 7:30PM.

Some might say that this is more than a major annoyance and that it is an outright assault on personal liberty but I, personally, support the program and would love to see it instituted in NYC and other large North American cities like Toronto, Los Angeles and Chicago. This type of program was first brought into effect in the Columbian city of Bogota and adopted by Quito in 2010. The fines which increase steeply with each infraction and result in impound and jail time on the fourth occurrence are intended primarily to reduce traffic but have the added benefit of reducing pollution from idling cars.

Now, most of my family in Quito think "pico y placa" is a horrible idea and suggest that it has resulted in people buying and registering more cars to circumvent the law but I just don't think so. Ecuador, although steadily developing is still not rife with millionaires and the average salary in Quito is about $300 per month. People making this kind of money are simply not going to be buying new cars so they can drive on one day a week. Rather, it seems that people are being more strategic with their vehicle use and have adapted rather well. I hope to see more low-tech, high-concept ideas for green car use in the future and will be sure to keep my eye out so I can bring you more of this type of news.

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