Source: AFP
Polls opened in Paris on Sunday for a referendum on tripling parking costs for heavy SUVs, a campaign that has pitted drivers’ groups against city hall.
About 1.3 million Parisians are eligible to vote on the change, which would see cars weighing 1.6 tonnes or more charged 18 euros ($19.50) an hour to park in central areas or 12 euros further out.
Fully electric cars would have to exceed two tonnes to be affected, while people living or working in Paris, taxi drivers, shopkeepers, health workers and disabled people would be exempt.
“The bigger they are, the more they pollute,” Socialist Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo said in December to justify the step.
Under her watch, the city has paved many streets, including the banks of the Seine River, and created a network of bike lanes in an effort to discourage driving and reduce harmful emissions.
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Environmental group WWF has labeled SUVs an “anomaly”, saying they burn 15 percent more fuel than a classic coupe and cost more to build and buy.
City Hall has further highlighted safety concerns about taller, heavier SUVs, which it says are “twice as deadly to pedestrians as a typical car” in a crash.
Vehicles also stand out as taking up more public space — either on the road or while parked — than others.
Paris authorities say the average car has put on 250 kilograms (550 pounds) since 1990.
Hidalgo, whose city this summer will host the 2024 Olympics, rarely misses an opportunity to brag about the city hall’s environmental credentials and its effort to drastically reduce car use downtown.
35 million euros a year
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But motoring groups attacked the plan, with Yves Carra of Mobilite Club France saying the “SUV” classification was “a marketing term” that “doesn’t mean anything”.
He argued that compact SUVs would not be covered by the measures, which would, however, affect family coupes and estate cars.
Conservative opposition figures in the Paris council say this inaccurate targeting of the referendum “shows the extent of the manipulation by the city government”.
Even among fuel-burning cars, “a new, modern SUV… pollutes no more, or even less, than a small diesel vehicle built before 2011,” said the 40 million d’automobilistes driver group.
Maud Gatel, an MP for the centrist MoDem party, said that “if this was really about reducing pollution, there would be a distinction between internal combustion and hybrid or electric vehicles”.
The wide range of exemptions will leave almost 27 percent of SUVs in Paris unaffected by higher parking fees, he added, citing data from research firm AAA Data.
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Hidalgo’s transport chief, David Belliard, of the Green party, says around 10% of vehicles in Paris will be hit by the higher parking fees, which could generate up to €35m a year.
Paris’ push against SUVs has not gone unnoticed elsewhere in France, with Lyon’s Green party mayor planning a three-tier parking fee for both residents and visitors from June.
The latest city referendum in Paris, to ban hop-on, hop-off scooter rentals from the capital’s streets, passed in a vote in April 2023 — but garnered only 7 percent.
Source: AFP