What is the increase in the parking rate for approved SUVs in Paris?

This Sunday, a referendum promoted by the mayor, Anne Hidalgo, was approved in Paris to increase parking rates for “heavy, bulky and polluting” individual vehicles so that the host city of this year’s Olympic Games is more ecological and respectful pedestrians and cyclists.

With low participation, a 54% of votes cast During the consultation, they supported the measure aimed at triple parking fees for drivers of urban off-road cars called SUVs – accused of being very polluting – coming from outside the city, while 45.5% reject it.

A little more than 78,000 people out of the 1.3 million summoned, or 5.7%, attended the consultation decided by the municipality, in the 39 polling stations in the capital, according to the official results delivered by the newspaper Le World.

The measure is aimed at SUVs, an acronym in English for “Sport Utility Vehicle”, which combine the characteristics of a passenger car with those of a 4×4. The cost of parking an SUV for non-residents in the central districts of Paris would be equivalent to 18 euros per hour the first two hours, compared to 6 euros per hour for small vehicles.

From now on, parking will become more and more punitive: park for six hours with an SUV (enough, for example, to see a show and a restaurant) it would cost 225 euros compared to 75 euros for the smallest vehicles, notes The Associated Press.

Thus, the consultation aims to discourage “bulky and polluting” cars, according to the municipality. During the referendum, Parisians registered on the electoral lists voted and the question asked of them was: “For or against the creation of a specific rate for the parking of heavy, bulky and polluting individual cars?”

Before the consultation, Hidalgo pleaded in several publications on social networks to promote the vote which SUVs took up too much space in the narrow streets of Paris and they are too polluting . “They threaten our health and our planet and cause more road accidents than small cars. The bigger it is, the more polluting it is,” he said, referring to studies according to which more than half of Parisians breathe polluted air.

After reading the results of the consultation, the mayor of the Socialist Party welcomed the “clear choice of Parisians” in favor of a measure “good for health and good for the planet”.

The Swiss NGO World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) considered SUVs as a global warming “aberration” because they are “200 kilos heavier, 25 cm longer, 10 cm wider” than a standard car. They also require more materials to make, consume 15% more fuel and emit 20% more CO2. In 2021, the WWF had already attacked SUVs, warning that they were crushing the advertising market, representing on average 3 hours and 50 minutes of television advertising per day in 2019, and 18 pages of print media.

Motorist associations have criticized the initiative of the Parisian municipality and assure that it is a ” trade name ” What “It does not mean anything” , according to Yves Carra, spokesperson for the French Mobility Club. Automotive pressure group “40 million motorists” has launched a petition to support the freedom of drivers to use the vehicle of their choice, French radio RTL reported.

“We must firmly oppose these attacks on freedom persecuted with false green pretenses “, said the group. “If we don’t stop it now, this unjustified rebellion led by an ultra-urban, anti-automotive minority will spread like gangrene to other cities.” The municipality’s conservative opposition and the French Minister for Ecological Transition, Christophe Béchu, also opposed this initiative, saying on RTL that it was a “form of punitive ecology”.

The initiative to increase heavy goods vehicle fares had been considered since June last year, when the municipality voted in favor of the “progressive parking pricing depending on the duration, engine, size and weight of the cars. The motion was initially proposed by the Greens party, and Parisian councilor Frédéric Badina-Serpette clarified that the aim was to “focus on an absurdity: self-embracing… the inexorable increase in weight and size of vehicles circulating in our country. cities, and particularly in Paris,” as The Local France reported in July.

Hidalgo, whose city will host the 2024 Olympic Games , is known in the country for its environmental credentials at town hall. Since becoming mayor in 2014, she has reinvented the city as green metropolis , with a crackdown on car use in the city center. Under his socialist government, the streets of Paris were transformed with 84 km of cycle paths created since 2020 and a 71% increase in bicycle use between the end of Covid-19 confinements and 2023, according to the municipality.

The socialist mayor divided roads to accommodate more cycle paths and trees and opened routes along the banks of the Seine to pedestrians and cyclists. Traffic disruptions have been considerable, which critics say does little to solve the pollution problem. “Change is hard,” Hidalgo told the New York Times in 2019, referring to the large number of opponents – notably taxi drivers – he had gained after implementing environmental measures.

In April 2023 in Paris a referendum to ban scooters rental with multiple stops, but the participation rate was low, with only 7% of voters. In May last year, the city of Lyon also implemented a parking fee policy based on vehicle weight, which took effect last month. Cities like Grenoble and the Rosemont-La Petite-Patrie district in Montreal, Canada; They plan to implement similar plans, The Local France reported.