Clean up your act or get out of town •
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Only vehicles which meet zero or near-zero emissions standards will be allowed to enter key European cities as part of a project announced by Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott on Sunday.
Oxford is so far the only UK city to sign up to the Alternative Traffic in Towns (ALTER) project, but Athens, Florence, Barcelona, Lisbon and Stockholm are involved and others will be invited to participate at a convention in Florence on 23 October.
At the EU Joint Environment and Transport Ministers Council meeting in Chester, Prescott said it was time for legislation to help raise demand for cleaner vehicles.
Each local authority will decide on the scale of its involvement, but at its most radical ALTER will ban polluting vehicles from defined areas of cities. A start-up date of 2001 has been mooted.