Paris votes to crack down on SUVs | Non-Parisians will be charged almost $20 per hour to park large gas or hybrid vehicles within the city center in a bid to address pedestrian safety and air pollu…::Parisians have voted to increase parking charges for out-of-town SUV drivers as part of the city’s efforts to address road safety, air pollution, and climate change.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Parisians have voted to triple parking charges for out-of-town SUV drivers as part of the city’s efforts to address road safety, air pollution, and climate change.
“Paris is transforming itself to allow people to breathe better and live better.” In a video published to Facebook on November 14th, Hidalgo promoted the referendum by referencing a World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) study that found SUVs to be 20 percent more polluting and twice as likely to kill a pedestrian in a collision compared to smaller conventional cars.
The vote was closely monitored by other capital cities like London, which face similar challenges in tackling the various safety and pollution issues caused by the growing global popularity of SUV-type vehicles.
The increase in SUV parking rates is the latest measure Hidalgo has pursued to make Paris more friendly to the environment, pedestrians, and cyclists.
Paris officials have improved cycling infrastructure and announced plans to set up a traffic-reducing “tranquil zone” to reduce the flow of vehicles into the city center, for example, and successfully banned rental electric scooters last year following a rise in injuries and fatalities among users.
Hidalgo said last week that the removal of rental scooters had introduced a “feeling of liberation and calm,” which Paris aims to build upon further by reducing the number of SUVs in the city center.
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I think restrictions like these should also include SUV EVs. Safety is the bigger priority than incentivizing a few more EV sales and in the future, there may only be EVs anyway.
Honestly, they should just ban all SUVs from entering altogether.
Not because of the environment or safety, just because I hate that everything is an SUV these days and they are boring af
Looks at Rivian, Hummer EV, and Cybertruck having crab walk features… yeah
Honestly, they should just ban all SUVs from entering altogether.
That’s not going to convince me to sell my SUV. It’d just cause me to buy a second car.
That would mean lots of people would have to buy a new car, which is much worse for the environment than to keep driving an SUV
Or people could just take the train or walk.
Remember, we’re talking about Paris, not a third world country in North America.
Well they also exempt taxis and city residents so it’s not about safety or the environment it’s about the money.
All SUV should be banned, but at least city residents pay taxes to the city. Sub urbanites think that they own the city and try to force it’s habitats to accept an insecure, congested, and contaminated city because is comfortable for them. If you don’t want to live in the city, it’s OK, but don’t pretend the city have to back forward for you (not talking about you personally, talking about people who lives in suburbs).
I don’t know what it’s like where you live, but where I live rent in the city works out to about two thirds of my annual income and I have a well paying job (above average for my city).
So - living in the suburbs is not really a life style choice. I can afford a very comfortable home in the outer suburbs, while in the inner city I could only afford to rent a small bedroom with a shared kitchen/bathroom/living space. And since we have a child, a share house isn’t really an option (I did live that way when I was younger).
And while I love cycling to work I can’t do it often, because it takes almost 4 hours (two hours each direction). I can take a bus, but that’s even slower (since I have to go to the CBD first, then take another bus across town to the non-CBD area where I work). The bus also costs more than twice as much as driving. Driving, by the way, takes 30 minutes.
Since I live in the outer suburbs anyway, with nice wide roads, unlimited free parking, I choose to take advantage of it by spending a lot of time outdoors where if you want a cold beer, you need to bring a fridge. If you want a hot meal, you need to bring a full kitchen. If you want to take a canoe out the water, you need to bring a canoe with you, etc etc. So, we have an SUV. And we’re not going to give it up. Sorry.
If my city banned SUVs, I’d probably just start taking taxis instead. I’m not sure that would be better for the environment or local traffic. Definitely wouldn’t affect my daily life, since I don’t live or work in the CBD.
Not being snarky: if it were about the money, would city residents NOT be exempt?
No good point, I appreciate discussions!
I think they know if it didn’t exempt city residents there would be enough backlash from eligible voters it wouldn’t pass. Seeing as it’s a fine and not a ban it can have secondary effects of improving safety and the environment but primarily it will raise money.
Oversized vehicles are just as destructive to the environment, regardless of whether they are EV or not. In order to move that much mass, they require exponentially more electricity, which results in increased battery size and therefore more mass.
This isn’t a flaw EVs per se, it is a flaw of obnoxiously obese vehicles.
I’d love it if there were a wide range of offerings for EVs that aren’t crossovers/SUVs. Once you take them off the list, it’s slim pickings. Doubly so if you want range over 200mi, and doubly so again if you refuse to buy a Tesla.
“You can try the Mustang Mach-E, that doesn’t have much SUV in it.”
I hope that this becomes practice throuout Europe and the UK. UK ministers however will say almost anything for short term gain.
So if I rent a 9 pax van and bring 8 friends to Paris, it will cost more money than if we all took separate smaller vehicles?
Just be careful that those cars are not too heavy. Since this law says 1.6t , a Toyota Camry qualifies as an SUV
Not a lot of Camrys in Europe, but I get your point. I think this law needs some revisions. Charging based on how many empty seats are in your vehicle upon entry and exit of the city, may be a better way.
Okay let’s do some more math. Let’s say we take three separate smaller cars. Parking price evens out if the cost for one larger vehicle is triple. But now you have three vehicles bringing in pollution instead of a large one that only takes 20% more than a smaller one. And those three vehicles take up more parking spaces and create more traffic on the roads, which would go against their stated claim of making the roads safer for pedestrians and cyclists.
If you’re looking to rent for the day, you would never pick 3 cars over 1. And if you already own the 3 cars, you wouldn’t go out of your way to rent another one. I don’t see how a parking charge would change this, unless it was far heavier than this proposal is.
Additionally, think about how many full 9-seat vans there are in Paris. Think about how many single-occupant SUVs there are. I think the benefit here is pretty clear.
I think it is a given that you can create scenarios for every law that make the law look stupid.
I doubt that the amount of 9 seater cars with enough people inside is actually significant to recalculate the law.
The decision by weight is most likely done as this is a value which can be easily evaluated.
World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) study that found SUVs to be 20 percent more polluting and twice as likely to kill a pedestrian in a collision compared to smaller conventional cars.
Twice as likely to kill a pedestrian…if that number holds up this needs to happen in more cities. Driving an excessively deadly vehicle through crowded areas shouldn’t be free.
I don’t think some millionaire earned a 2x chance to kill a pedestrian by being able to pay. I’m not a fan of fees that only apply rules to poor people.
But outright bans are harder to get passed, so fees are better than nothing.
Funny thing about markets though, when you put fees on SUVs that just means the prices on used SUVs will go down, and so you’ll have fees being leveed on only the poorest who have no choice but to buy the cheapest car they can find and the richest who don’t care about the fee.
They can still buy used regular cars. Anyway, in Paris and its suburbs, poor people can’t afford a car in the first place.
I’d love to see how they calculated those 20%. If it’s merely a statistic of which type of car was involved in what share of deadly accidents with pedestrians, it says nothing about the car but rather about the drivers.
Once a car reaches a certain speed, it really doesn’t matter if it’s an ultralight vehicle or a tank.
Less mass means less momentum, so less force is required to slow it down, which means it can slow down faster in the time between noticing the pedestrian and colliding.
Higher hood means less visibility directly in front of the vehicle. It also means it’s more likely to hit the centre of mass so the body takes the full force and falls on the ground the vehicle is moving towards, rather than lower so that the legs get pushed out and the body ends up falling on the hood.
On the flip side, they are more visible and generally louder, so pedestrians might be making fewer mistakes on their end.
The differences aren’t about when they hit someone at a high enough speed any vehicle will likely kill them, it’s about the thresholds between a harmless bump and a fatal injury.
And even if the driver is the main factor, that’s all the more reason to increase the burden involved in driving them.
