Paris votes on SUVs: voters back proposal to triple parking fees for SUV drivers
Paris votes on SUVs: voters back proposal to triple parking fees for SUV drivers
The French capital's mayor hailed a 'clear choice of Parisians' in favor of a measure that is 'good for our health and good for the planet.'
The measure to make vehicles weighing 1.6 tons and over pay 3x the parking rates for the first two hours has passed in Paris.
Now, let's get that in place for London and many other other places to help slow, and even reverse, this trend towards massive personal vehicles.
I might be wrong but most people who live and work in Paris don't drive. They have great public transit and there's a huge walking culture. When I was in Paris the only large vehicles I saw where taxis.
Your impression seems correct. I haven't manged to get to Paris yet, but the numbers I found align with your experiences. From a transport in Paris article:
"Paris has one of the most sustainable transportation systems in the world (private cars are only 12% of the overall traffic)"
"According to a 2018 INSEE survey, a majority of Parisians (64.3 percent) use public transport to get to work. Only 10.6 percent commuted to work by automobile. 10.5 percent walked or used roller skates; 5.5 percent commuted by bicycle; and 4.4 percent commuted by motorbike"
The local residents use public transit or walk/bike for work. They likely do exactly the same for daily errands, shopping, and entertainment. That's how it was in Berlin, London, and Helsinki when I was in those cities and it's wonderful.
I own an SUV and I'd still vote for a parking tax on them. Or pay per pound, estimated of course. You don't want people deciding to go for the mega F-250s because they aren't subject to the SUV tax.
We have two: A Ford Explorer (really trying to get the money to get rid of it) and a Forester. The Forester is small enough that it wouldn't be triple pay in Paris, but the Explorer is a 3 ton brick. We had it because a few years back we still had six kids at home, but now that they're filtering off to college, we are desperate to downsize. We're being stopped because our city's public transit (yay US cities) is a shitshow and our workplaces haven't given us raises in years. Yes, we're looking for other work, but so far it's been tough to find things in our field, etc.
As soon as we can, that vehicle is being kicked to the curb. It's a terrible waste.
Yeah I similarly got the SUV because of kids and I think there are use cases for them, they're just vastly overpurchased and a tax could curb that.