Image: colourcox
On Sunday, the city administration’s plan was implemented, according to which one hour of parking for SUVs and other heavy cars in the center should cost 18 euros instead of the usual 6 euros and in the outskirts 12 euros instead of 4 euros.
For six hours of parking in the center you will have to pay 225 euros instead of the previous 75 euros. The new regulation is scheduled to take effect from September 1st of this year.
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Six percent of those eligible took part in the vote
Around 1.3 million residents of the capital took part in the vote under the motto “More or less SUV in Paris?” called. According to the provisional final results, only just under six percent of them took part in the vote. Around 54.5 percent voted in favor of increasing parking fees, around 45.5 percent against it.
The city’s argument for higher fees for SUVs: The heavy bodies caused increased environmental pollution, took up a lot of public space and endangered traffic safety. The special tariff for large cars was intended to limit the nuisance they cause.
“For environmental reasons and for safety reasons”
“The Parisians are the vanguard of a movement, many cities will certainly follow suit,” said Mayor Anne Hidalgo after the decision. “They want to take space away from these heavy cars on the roads, for environmental reasons and for safety reasons.” The decision is good for the planet and for health.
Only visitors should pay the special tariff for SUVs. Neighbors should be excluded, as should tradesmen and care services. The tariff should apply to combustion engine and hybrid models weighing 1.6 tons or more and electric models weighing two tons or more. The regulation does not apply to private parking garages.
Petition against higher parking fees for heavy vehicles
The city administration received strong criticism even before the vote. The automobile club “40 million d’automobilistes” has already launched a petition against higher parking fees for heavy vehicles, which are planned in Lyon, Bordeaux and Grenoble in addition to Paris. “Don’t kid yourself: This fight against SUVs is just a loophole to eradicate the car as a whole,” said the club.
However, the Paris approach received support from the head of the International Energy Agency (IEA), Fatih Birol. He called for government intervention against the growing prevalence of city off-road vehicles (SUVs). “It is crucial to solve the problems they pose in terms of additional energy demands, public space demands and additional danger to pedestrians,” Birol told the newspaper Les Échos. States should advise customers not to buy an SUV and take regulatory action in view of the trend towards heavy vehicles. This could take the form of higher taxation or higher parking fees.
Fight against SUVs as part of a transport transition
In Paris, the fight against SUVs is part of a traffic turnaround that has been pushed forward for years by the socialist mayor Hidalgo and the red-green city government. As “Les Échos” calculated based on registration data, the increased parking fees affect almost 900,000 cars in the capital region of Île-de-France, around 16 percent of the vehicle population.
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Source: Nachrichten
