Parisians vote in anti-SUV parking, pollution referendum
PARIS: Parisians were voting on Sunday in a referendum on tripling parking costs for hefty SUV-style cars, a campaign that has drivers’ groups up in arms against city hall. Some 1.3 million in the French capital are eligible to cast their ballot on the change, which would see cars weighing 1.6 tons or more charged 18 euros ($19.50) per hour for parking in central areas, or 12 euros further out.
Fully electric cars would have to top two tons to be affected, while people living or working in Paris, taxi drivers, tradespeople, health workers and people with disabilities would all be exempt. “The bigger they are, the more they pollute,” Paris’s Socialist mayor Anne Hidalgo said in December to justify the step.
Most people at one polling station in the city’s 10th district said they were voting in favor of the higher fees. Caroline, a 51-year-old teacher who asked not to give her family name, said she backed the move “for obvious environmental reasons”, adding that “to be honest, no-one really needs an SUV in Paris”.
On Hidalgo’s watch, the city has pedestrianized many streets, including the banks of the river Seine, and built a network of cycle lanes in an effort to discourage driving and reduce harmful transport emissions. Environmental group WWF has dubbed SUVs an “aberration”, saying they burn 15 percent more fuel than a classic coupe and cost more to build and purchase. City hall has further pointed to safety concerns about taller, heavier SUVs, which it says are “twice as deadly for pedestrians as a standard car” in an accident. The vehicles are also singled out for taking up more public space — whether 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 will this summer host the 2024 Olympics, rarely misses a chance to boast of the environmental credentials of the town hall and its drive to drastically reduce car use in the center.
But drivers’ groups have attacked the scheme, with Yves Carra of Mobilite Club France saying the “SUV” classification is “a marketing term” that “means nothing”. He argued that compact SUVs would not be covered by the measures, which would however hit family-sized coupes and estate cars. Conservative opposition figures on the Paris council say this imprecise targeting of the referendum “shows the extent of the manipulation by the city government”.