Paris mayor plans to triple SUV parking tariffs to cut air pollution
Paris mayor plans to triple SUV parking tariffs to cut air pollution
‘It’s a form of social justice,’ says Anne Hidalgo of move to target richest drivers to tackle climate breakdown
I have to drive a freaking pick up truck for professional reasons and even I loathe the freaking thing.
Too long, too wide, too tall, too everything and anything for any road and I drive in country roads.
The craze for ever growing vehicles is going to extremes.
Tax and penalize these cars until it hurts.
Most of my friends that are in the trades prefer small vans over pickup trucks. They can fit more tools, better organized, and easier to secure. Pickup trucks are very niche vehicles.
Bruh, my only vehicle for close to two years was a truck that I inherited, a 2002 Chevy Silverado 1500 LS. I believe it got about 8mpg on average, but I dealt with it because I didn’t have any other way to get a different vehicle at the time.
Nowadays I drive a 2018 Ford Fiesta SE. The difference is night and day. Stops on a dime, accelerates quickly, I can fit it anywhere I want, and it gets an average of 34mpg. I went from paying between $75 to $125 every week and a half for gas to spending about $30 over the same time period.
I drive small cars in my personal life, although I currently own 2 station wagons because of family and pets. I usually get an average consumption of 6-7L/100km, which is not bad at all.
My first and most beloved car was a hatchback that could get 5,5L/100km.
I have to drive a pick up for work but I do not enjoy it, to the least degree.
Anne Hidalgo does some very cool stuff.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Paris intends to triple parking charges for large sports utility vehicles (SUVs) in order to push them out of the city and limit emissions and air pollution, the mayor has said.
“It is a form of social justice,” Anne Hidalgo announced on Friday of the plan to deliberately target the richest drivers to tackle the climate breakdown and air pollution.
Paris will hold a referendum on 4 February asking residents to vote for or against a specific parking tariff for heavy, large and polluting SUVs.
David Belliard, a deputy mayor of Paris for the Green party, said: “SUVs cost between €6,000 to €7,000 more than a standard car and all the studies by car firms show that they are bought by the wealthiest people with high incomes … This measure, if applied, will be directed at the richest people in order to finance the transformation of our public space to adapt to the climate crisis, so it’s a form of social redistribution.”
Under Hidalgo, Paris has for years raised pressure on drivers by increasing parking costs and gradually banning diesel vehicles, while expanding the bicycle lane network in the congested capital.
The French motorists’ association, 40 millions d’automobilistes, denounced what it called an “unjustified” clampdown and restriction on liberties.
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Just SUVs? Why not Lamborghini, Ferrari, Bently, or all the other luxery vehicles? This seems pretty arbitrary at first glance. I don't know french car culture very well but aren't SUVs more of a middle class thing?
Could it also be to do with the increased lethality of SUVs? A study in Ireland shows 11.5% of pedestrians hit by an SUV were killed versus 4.5% for a car.
No law is perfect and there's always an edge case to provide a reason for doing nothing. This is definitely a step in the right direction to stop the arms race that purchasing larger vehicles has become though.
French car culture isnt much different than European car culture in general, for the sake of the topic here. Small displacement engines (1.6, or 2.0 liter usually) and small footprint because of space. Scooters and pedal bikes are super common around places like Paris, tho…parking, gas, weaving through the congestion, etc. However, some of the wagon variants of cars and these luxury cars you mention sometimes have a much larger footprint than small and mid-sized SUVs. Unless overhead clearance is an issue, like in parking garages, i don’t quite understand the reason for singling out SUVs here.
This, of course, is all stated with European sized SUVs in mind that share the same small displacement engines as other cars. Not the giant American sized ones that have much larger engines where emissions issues now come into play. However, all those luxury cars usually have even bigger engines and sometimes the loud exhaust as well…sooo…🤷