buses can run on old chip fat these days, causing little or no polution.
if the details of air quality were available in the tourist office or Marie, as they should be, people would either not come or, more likely, get involved in agreeing a sane stratergy to clean the place up.

Francesca - pollution indexes of Chamonix and nearby Haute Savoie towns ARE posted at the office of tourism! They are in plain public view next to the weather forecast. They are also published in the Dauphine Libere local newspaper.

Pollution in Chamonix is equivalent to the larger cities nearby - some days worse for dust and carbon monoxide. Many people in town are very concerned about this.

BUT I can promise you having lived here before and after the tunnel being shut/re-opened, that in fact while the tunnel was closed, the same leaf blowers and the same buses were in Chamonix. But the air/noise pollution was FAR FAR lower.

Thousands upon thousands of trucks pass through the valley EVERY WEEK year round, all in low gear lumbering up this motorway slowly, spewing out intense diesel fumes as they do so.

The air, the snow - everything around the valley is very NOTICEABLY more disgusting, grey/yellow and filthy since the tunnel was re-opened to truck traffic.

Go up any lift and look down at the valley for clear proof of the pool of filth we breathe daily. I have photographs to prove it was NOT like that when the tunnel was shut. The noise pollution was far less too. Now, you can hear the motorway all the way up on the high Tour of Mont Blanc trail from Les Houches to the Brevent. It’s not good for wildlife or plants.

The tunnel traffic is the single biggest contributor to the pollution in this valley with proof from the pollution index readings that have been taken over the years.

As far as leaf blowers go - I do detest them and think they should be banned under EU rules. They are useless items. 

One thing done in Chamonix to help air pollution in the past couple of years is the banning of open fires to burn garden waste. Unfortunately the neighbors in separately goverened Les Houches are not so enlightened and still allow open burning.

As far as the buses go, the problem to me is that so few people use them and streets are clogged with traffic. And when I arrived here you did not see 4x4 giant cars with one rich English or Italian woman in it going a few blocks to pick up her kid from school like you do now (I have a lazy neighbor who drives her 4x4 down the dirt drive to get the mail each day!!!).

I would be extremely happy if 4x4 vehicles were exorbitantly taxed at the town limits as in London. I also support all non-local plated cars being forced to park outside the town similar to how Zermatt bans people from driving into their town, and only allowing through-traffic. Deliveries or locally owned vehicles could be allowed during regulated hours.

Bus issues are that they do not run often enough to be convenient to the average tourist’s needs (especially at lunch time!) and you must CHANGE buses if you pass through Chamonix. Consequently in high season they are packed with little room to sit or place gear. It’s not a pleasant experience.

If you holiday in Les Houches and you want to ski in Argentiere, you have 2 buses to catch to get there - it take 1 to 1.5 hours! Designated express buses going directly from one end of the valley to the other without stopping in the center would be ideal.

The town’s solution to ‘encourage’ more riders is to suppress more parking rather than to address the bus route and schedule issues! Since there are not enough buses running to start with, the result is now we have more people clogging up the streets with double parked vehicles of all sorts, creating trouble for the buses to get through town on time, hence it is a vicious circle.

But we can give kudos for the mini bus ‘Mulets’ in town center, which did have some of the fleet running I believe on alternative fuel or electric (can’t remember which).  These free town center shuttles are used by lazy tourists and by the elderly who definitely DO need this type of transport available.

But I think that what is most needed is to close the tunnel to truck traffic. Politically difficult.

Secondly to ban all visitor vehicles in town centers of Les Houches, Chamonix and Argentiere and to increase the buses and improve the existing train service (Vallorcine is not even serviced by a bus, only by the train) for the tourists who will then be required to take them.

I prefer to take the trains which are on time and run on electricity. They are fast and have a number of convenient stops up and down the valley (save Les Houches which has its train station place far from town center, and which needs a linked ‘Mulet’ service to bring people from the train station up to the center to make it viable to tell tourists to arrive by train).

Again an issue with the trains is that they do not run often enough and do not have enough allowances for gear such as mountain bikes (it would be great if the train service had a special ‘bike car’ to make it easy for tourists to arrive in Cham with gear like bikes, via train).

You are far better informed than the Tourist office, who agreed with my concerns but offered no information, the Marie dept which deals with eco information had no information but told me the dept for buses was on the floor above them...cant imagine why I wasnt offered the air quality info I was requesting.
Leaf/dust blowers are being funded by local and tourist money, it makes Chamonix seem very backward to employ some bloke to blow brown dust into the air for no reason at all. I am still available to help paint the cash cow red. Maybe National Park status would protect the poor beast

Not sure how you went about presenting your concerns but the town regularly produces a report on their ecology objectives and that was one of the things I read in French that informed me - their ideas for the bus improvements etc are all posted online. If you went in with any attitude or anger or spoke in English rather than French, then likely you just got the cold shoulder due to that.

Leaf blowers are funded by the same budget that the rest of Chamonix is funded on which comes from a combination of local taxes and subventions from the national government.

French government runs by doing things in writing, so something like starting to gather a list of signatures (in French) of people against the use of leaf blowers in Chamonix and then presenting this to the mayor’s office via registered mail and asking for a response might be more effective.

The town hall website is http://www.chamonix-mont-blanc.fr/ and you need to choose ‘Montagne environnment’ and then choose ‘Service Espace Verts’ in the drop down box and you will find the phone number and address of the person in charge of maintaining the greenery in town, which is quite likely the department which sends out the leaf blowing people.

Under the main header of ‘Grands Projets’ on that same site you will find the page dedicated to the ideas for the future of public transport. Yes the bus company is separate but their contract must be renewed by the mairie every so often so they do work in tandem. This is handled by the mayor’s ‘Maison des Projets’ becuase it is a special ‘large project’.

The site of Mont Blanc is being promoted by many green activists in town for inclusion on the UNESCO World Heritage sites list to better protect it.

I think this is the route chosen by activists because it is unlikely the same national government that forced Chamonix to choke down the tunnel re-opening to truck traffic would be likely to agree to turn this into a national park.

You can view detail for the movement for the World Heritage site inclusion project here : http://www.pro-mont-blanc.org/en_art_aff.php?id_article=16 .

How very dare I speak english in the tourist office!..or worse still have a problem with choking on the air.. (advertised as clean and healthy)
I have been coming to this area for over 25 years now and it has never been this bad. There should be the same law that exists here in uk/Switzerland and many other countries to switch off engines of stationary cars and buses and to
stop employing people to blow dust into the already acrid air.These small steps have nothing to do with the tunnel, they would improve the air at no cost and could bring even more cash to the area for non complience (Dust blower man could issue fines for engines parked and running and so not be out of work)