Parisians vote in favour of tripling parking costs for SUVs

Awesome, fuck SUV's
- I came down the comment section searching for exactly this kind of argumentation. Thank you!
- Yes! Fuck them! Wait...what? Why can't i park my Peugeot e-308 there? WHAT? No! That's not an SUV! Well...it's 1759 Kg and therefore an SUV. This rule is utter stupidity.
  
  1.6 tonnes with a combustion engine or hybrid vehicles, and more than 2 tonnes for electric vehicles
  There might be silly examples to find, but yours isn't one of them.
  I would look for cases where moving from petrol to hybrid pushes you over the limit. I think they should be measuring size and fuel efficiency, rather than weight.

"But that will make it cost prohibitive to own an SUV!!!"
Yes... Yes it will.
- You call it a bug.
  I call it a feature.
- Not for those who can afford 100k+ to buy it in the first place. There will be some who see this as a further requirement to show the world that they are rich enough to belong to an exclusive club.

This whole vehicular size arms race needs to go away please.
It's so retarded that people think they need to get bigger cars to "protect" themselves in accidents. Just feedback looping stupidity.
- The next "logical" step after SUVs is driving APCs in the name of safety.
  
  already exists, armed with variety of lethal and non-lethal defense systems, up-armoured to take on anything short of 30mmAP rounds
  
  Makes sense. The guy openly carrying weapons with the look of he is dying to use them clearly gets into less problems then the guy who doesn't attract any attention to himself. You really want to be threatening people by just being there, that will definitely work out well for you. That's why I carry around a matchet and scream at random people to back off
- Penis enhancement
- But how will the other people know I have money if my car isn't huge?
  The protection argument has some merit, though. I remember seeing several studies that show survival rates are bigger for the SUV inhabitants in crashes. What SUV drivers don't know (or simply don't care about) is that it's survival in the detriment of smaller cars inhabitants.
  
  Poor crash compatibility, and for reasons to do with chicken imports from Europe in the past (Not just bikes covers this), light trucks have less regulation in NA compared to cars, incentivizing the manufacturers to push them into consumers as well.
  It's shittiness all round and government is like that cat from the "bachelorette woman crying" meme.

While this is great, someone who doesnt mind paying a 100k for a car wont mind the extra fees.
What would really change the game is changing existing parking spaces to fixed size parking spaces and if your over that you get towed.
That would mean they have to park their car somewhere more remote which would incentisize not buying huge cars to begin with
- I can't speak for Parisians, but here in the us my experience is that it's the people who drove the big cars who bitch the most about the price of gas.
  So the added cost would definitely be a disincentive.
  
  There's a ridiculous thing in the US that Europeans probably don't know about called "rolling coal," where people in big pickup trucks that they never use for hauling anything because it would scrape the bed modify their truck to belch out a huge cloud of black smoke on demand.
  I have a Prius. They love doing it to me, because of course a hybrid that still uses gas must mean that I'm one-a them commie tree-hugging hippies. They probably pay as much in gas to do it once as it would take to get my car to go 5-10 miles. And they're the ones putting Biden 'I did that' stickers next to gas pumps when gas prices go up.
  Hey rednecks, you know what you have to do to not worry much about gas prices? Buy a fuel-efficient car.
  
  We drive a Toyota Yaris and bitch about the price of gas.
- It's a gentle nudge.
  If you're picking a car, and didn't think about it very much, something like paying more for parking might well nudge you to a smaller car.
  And it means when those 100k cars go on the second hand market for 20k a few years later, the people paying that much will not be happy with the fees.
  On a slight tangent, range rovers are being targeted by criminals. To the point where RR ups the security, and it's worked around in a month or so.
  This has lead to insurance premiums going way up. And while there are a few people just choking down the payments, others are switching away from RR, or from SUVs entirely.
  It doesn't put every customer off, but it certainly affects a chunk.
- 15k seems like a Dacia Duster. That isn't considered a SUV according to the limits of that law (1400 kg)
  It's more to limit those useless monsters like the range Rovers
  
  15k for an almost new SUV? I think you are probably confusing a CUV with an SUV
- While this is great, someone who doesnt mind paying a 100k for a car wont mind the extra fees.
  Not just that, it removes the.. let's call it 'shame factor'. Some people that would feel bad about driving big, polluting cars in the city now will feel perfectly justified: they are paying extra for the privilege. This will not reduce the number of cars and likely will increase it. It's simply a bad policy. As you said, number of parking spots for big cars should be reduced each year putting greater and greater pressure on the owners to get rid of them.
- and if your over that you get towed.
  A neighbor of mine who was a 60 something year old accountant got one of those oversized pickups and managed to block my space multiple times since he couldn't angle it in correctly.

54.6% voted for the increase.... turnout was 5.7%. So just over 3% of the eligible Parisian population voted for this.
Source
- The turnout for those things is always extremely low.
- LOL at all the SUV drivers that didn't go to vote
  
  They were trying to find parking during the vote and missed it.
- This special tariff is aimed at visitors' cars, residents are excluded and remain unaffected, as are tradesmen and care services. So most Parisians don't care.
  
  And even then, only a third of Parisians own a car.
- Ah yes, as an Englishman I can wholeheartedly agree making decisions on minor majorities is a fantastic idea, right guys?
  
  Well, people always have a tendency to not show up to vote and then complain about the results.

Suck it, SUV owners in Paris.
But really, suck it every SUV owner. They're terrible in every single way and no one can change that.
- As an SUV owner, I agree. It tries to do too many things, so it's not good at any of them. When we had kids, I wanted a minivan. They're ugly, they don't get good gas mileage, their handling is like a pregnant yak- but if you need to haul around kids and their stuff, there's nothing better. My wife at least considered it, but we ended up with a hybrid SUV. I don't completely hate it, but I still would rather have gotten a minivan.
  
  I have a compact SUV (CR-V.) It gets good gas mileage and has enough room for my very large dogs. Some people have reasons, just a lot of people don't.
  I'd like to see a tax on ego trucks first.
- What about hybrid crossover SUVs?
  
  They pay an additional tax for being ugly
- Good luck defining what is and isn't an SUV and try to enforce parking restrictions based on that.
  Companies will just define their own classes to avoid this unless there is a solid measurement in either dimension or weight. If it's weight then they will be destroyed by the media for being anti-EV and if it's size then the whole SUV argument goes out the window
  For example is Audi A8 not an SUV but Ford Puma is?
  
  They defined it as above 1.6 tons (metric) for ICE/hybrid and 2 tons for EVs
  
  Total outside dimensions. If it takes up more space than the typical economy car it pays the high tax. Since you seem a bit pedantic I will define it exactly:
  Take the vehicle and put it in water, use weights if needed to submerge it. Measure the displaced water. If that value is above that if a typical economy car it pays a higher tax. Economy car is defined as the what an average of a poll of randomly selected people defined it to be in 2024.
- Comments from @wheeldawg@sh.itjust.works are terrible in every single way and no one can change that! Good stuff, the fact that Paris classifies everything above 1,6 tonnes as an SUV, so that put's even a measly Peugeot e-308 in that cateogry. But it's a compact BEV! Still weighs 1759 Kg.
  
  It's actually 2 tons for evs specifically to account for that.

Easiest vote in the world is to vote to raise someone else's taxes. We should do that for billionaires.
- Not just "someone" else's. SUV owners'. Specifically. For a good reason.
- Actually, in Paris, if you own an SUV or drive one in the city, you're rich. Poorer can't afford one and even a car is too expensive. It's already a tax on the rich.
  For more taxes on the wealth, it's up to the national government and it's a complete different story.

Wait, they banned electric scooter rentals?
Is the main argument that they're unsightly?
- So, I'm pretty sure they're talking about the rental-scooters, not all scooters, which, peopel who tend to buy their own don't do these things... but....people get hurt on them, they increase accidents. People do stupid shit, like riding on sidewalks and trying to zip through pedestrians.
  they get locked up all over the place, blocking sidewalks, entryways, bikeracks, etc.
  in short the rental things are a massive nuisance,
  
  I'd like to add that Paris is one of the tightest cities there is in Europe. there's just so little space already. with thousands of badly parked scooters cluttering up sidewalks people got fed up very quickly. the vote was pretty one sided IIRC.
- They said they're dangerous and cause stress for pedestrians
  
  Stand up scooters should use the bike lanes.
  
  Wouldn't this apply to both rented and personally-owned scooters though?
  Getting rid of the rentals might reduce the number temporarily, but doesn't really seem to solve the problem.

This thread was weird to read as an owner of a CR-V. I checked and it's just under the weight limit for the new law, and it fits easily in "compact" parking spaces, but I think of it as an SUV because that's what it looks like.
- Yes it is aimed against heavy and large suv, as they are more dangerous for other road users, more polluting and take too much of public place in a cramped city.
  A CR-V and other "normal" suv does not take more place than a sedan
- At least in the US they call them crossovers, unless they're on a truck chassis, then it's an SUV.
  This distinction isn't really common parlance or anything, but it usually is how the manufacturers call them.
- I drive a crv and have always known it as a crossover. Although funny that you mention compact spots, I looked it up one time to see if a crv counts and it does count as compact. Never the less I had a guy scold me for parking in the spot one time. His sedan definitely had a bigger foot print and he was right on the line, while I was comfortably in the middle of the spot.
  I just looked down at the line between our cars and kind of raised my eyebrow at him while pointing out my car is smaller than his.

This limit needs to be instituted at a country level.
For example now that the Volkswagen up/Skoda citigo/seat Mii has been put out of production, there isn't a single car made by all the brands of the Volkswagen group that's shorter than 4 meters.

This is the best summary I could come up with:
In a referendum on Sunday, which was closely watched by other capital cities, including London, 54.6% voted in favour of special parking fees for SUVs, according to provisional results.
“Parisians have made a clear choice … other cities will follow,” said Paris’s Socialist mayor, Anne Hidalgo, adding that road safety and air pollution were key reasons for the vote.
She said the aim was to deliberately target the richest drivers of expensive, heavy and polluting cars who had not yet made changes to their behaviour to address the climate crisis.
Emmanuel Grégoire, Paris’s deputy mayor, posted on X as voting began: “Heavier, more dangerous, more polluting … SUVs are an environmental disaster.”
Under Hidalgo, Paris has for years raised pressure on drivers by increasing parking costs and gradually banning diesel vehicles, while expanding the bicycle lane network in the congested capital.
The motorists’ lobby group 40 Millions d’Automobilistes had argued that drivers should be free to choose whatever vehicle they want, warning that the move to raise parking tariffs was unjustified and the work of “an ultra-urban and anti-car minority”.
The original article contains 540 words, the summary contains 180 words. Saved 67%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
- 54.6% doesn’t seem like a clear choice to me.
  
  I think with votes like this, especially with the low turnout, it just shows most people don't really care because they don't feel directly impacted one way or another. The people that feel impacted negatively by SUVs slightly outnumber people who feel impacted negatively by increased parking prices. That's the result.
  
  It's not a landslide but it's pretty clear which side one. Now 50.1% could be a rounding error.

So they made having an SUV a money flex?
- It already is?

I would love this in Australia, all the private school soccer mums would revolt!

- 5.6% participation. A joke
  
  True, dummies that ignore local votes are jokes.
  
  Well, those who did not vote are complacent to the majority vote. So I'd say that's a win.
  Always go out there and vote, regardless of the option you choose. That's what keeps a democratic system up and running. If you don't, you just agree with what is decided by others and stay complacent.

Good. They are about as expensive as normal car park fees in Amsterdam.

The prices will apply to vehicles weighing more than 1.6 tonnes with a combustion engine or hybrid vehicles, and more than 2 tonnes for electric vehicles.
Bmw x2 xDrive25e is a hybrid weighing 1800kg.
Bmw x2 sDrive18i is a petrol weighing 1500kg.
Both have exactly the same petrol engine. The plugin hybrid car, despite being cleaner, falls under the new parking law while the pure petrol one does not. Seems like they didn't thought this through, and it is (again) bullshit to do this in the name of climate. They just want money.
- Heavier cars cause more wear and tear on the road, increasing the road maintenance costs. They also have larger tires. Tire dust is a large component of microplastics.
  Your one specific example is not the "gotcha" you think it is. Larger vehicles use more energy. That's just physics.
  
  You missed the part where it says 2 ton for full electric? More heavy electric cars with their instant torque and very high torque values tear up the road and its tyres more than the petrol variant.
- You can't make an overly specific limit or car makers would adjust the specs just enough to pass the check.
  If they had an exception or higher weight for hybrids, then SUVs like the Jeep renegade "hybrid" with their tiny 800 wh batteries would abuse the higher weight limit
  
  True but you can't deny by my example that people who invested in a more environmental friendly car are are punished for it.

Fuck that, the fine should be a billion times higher, and it should cover EVERY car. In existence. All of them. Everywhere. Personally I want to see a full scale global ban on motor vehicles. I am also perfectly certain that it will happen any day now.

Parisians hate their fellow countrymen almost as much as they hate Americans.
- This has to be the most American take of the week
  Car-brain plus assuming the french think about them, that's some top tier copium
  
  Nah, I've spent some time in Paris.
- Bruh, when you get a SUV/truck to drive around, you're declaring war on everyone else. It's literally an arms race.
  
  Are you sure about that? I know someone that drives a 2003 CR-V not because he wants to, but because he got it for free and can't afford to get a new or used car.
- Parisians don't give a shit about Americans one way or the other. I was just there and everyone was nice to me like they are to everyone else.
  
  It's so weird how there's this stereotype about French people hating Americans when people seem to have forgotten that Republicans once hated the French so much (for daring to not join America in a war) that they changed 'French fries' to 'freedom fries' for a while. And then there's the bullshit "France always surrenders" meme that so many Americans believe. The French military is fucking fierce.
  In my experience, it's Americans who hate the French a lot more than French people hating Americans.
- Wrong thread?
- Maybe it's because the MINI Countryman SUV is a UK brand manufactured by a German car company...

Well. This makes no sense for me. How do SUVs deffer from other cars? They take only one parking lot and many SUVs are even smaller than an average car. Why not to rise parking costs for luxury cars?
- RTFA
- Years ago, I heard an NPR piece about a French -ologist of some kind, who was revolutionizing advertising in the States, and he mentioned a small car that consumers viewed as saying “Rape me!” We are all driving around in jacked up station wagons, because of some weird, atavistic urges to feel inviolable and cosseted.
  Fundamentally, SUVs are an inefficient design for a passenger car. Even small crossovers, and I drive one myself, are inefficient relative to a station wagon offering the same volume and space for passengers and cargo.
  SUVs burn relatively more gas, they use more tires, they damage roads more, they are less controllable due to higher centers of gravity, they have poorer visibility of pedestrians and cyclists, and they require shitloads of engineering just to hide their shitty performance and safety characteristics.
  
  The problem with station wagons is that they are too low. They can easily stuck in mud or snow and it's easier to hit a rock or something. And about tires. I used the same set of tires for 11 years on my SUV. And modern cars are quite fuel efficient so there is no significant difference in fuel consumption anyways you don't want an always fuel hungry monster and it's better to consider mere efficient alternatives. Considering roads: well, in fact many roads are in quite bad condition so roads make damage to cars not vice versa :) And it's always better to have bigger wheels and higher vehicle to avoid crushing into a big pothole. about safety: modern SUVs have safety measures like stabilization you are just supposed not to drive recklessly. SUVs have poorer visibility but it's not that bad unless we are talking about american-style trucks. Of course I am saying all this thinking about average european SUV and they are abute the size of average sedan or hatchback or even smaller.
- If you have the time (35 min), this video does a great job of explaining the distinction.
  https://youtu.be/jN7mSXMruEo
  If you have even more time, I recommending looking into Strong Towns, of which the same creator summarized in this series of videos: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJp5q-R0lZ0_FCUbeVWK6OGLN69ehUTVa
  This channel opened my eyes to the extremely terrible world of car dependency that we live in. I will warn you that once you know this, you will never see the world the same way again, but it's extremely important that we know about this problems so that we can push our governments to fix them.
  
  The key word here is "unnecessary" but in fact the circumstances make us use SUVs because of bad weather, bad roads (and even absence if roads), a lot of stuff to transfer (from furniture and fridges to bikes). For traveling SUVs and minivans are perfect. If I lived in a center of a city and/or I didn't have to go to a countryside and I didn't have relatives or friends (or I hated them) I'd considered buying a micro car! But in any other circumstances it would be a hatchback, SUV, minivan or even fully-fledged offroad truck. Considering what people around me are driving it's mostly SUVs because it is an optimal car type. Even some carsharing cars and taxis are SUVs. That is why I'm surprised by these news about rising parking prices.
  
  Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
  https://piped.video/jN7mSXMruEo
  https://www.piped.video/playlist?list=PLJp5q-R0lZ0_FCUbeVWK6OGLN69ehUTVa
  Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
  I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.

- If we couldn't do that, it'd be pretty difficult to ever back down from a bad policy decision, which isn't exactly great either.
- If it weren't already unethical and obnoxious to drive an SUV in Paris, I'd agree that it should be phased in. As it is, however...
- Dude have you ever been to Paris? Have you seen how the people live? What is that tower of ignorance that you're speaking from? Anyone who drives an SUV in Paris likely doesn't have a real, traditional job at all. The costs associated with owning a large vehicle there are absolutely insane, starting from gas, taxes, and parking costs, ending with literally not being able to go into some streets if your vehicle is too large. It won't be a problem for these moneybags, don't speak for them.
  
  The whole point of the regulation is to decrease the use SUVs in the city for health and safety reasons. If cost doesn't matter to them, then this regulation is meaningless. It seems the people who pushed for this, and presumably most of the people who voted for it, disagree with you.
- but I don’t really like the idea that something you already own outright can be regulated to the point where it’s highly inconvenient or impossible to use.
  It was highly inconvenient for all of those people who had cars that took leaded gasoline to have to either keep buying lead substitute to put in their tank at an extra cost or sell their car.
  Guess we should have kept lead in gasoline.
- It's not like it would be impossible to sell. Yeah maybe not to Paris people but it is possible. Yeah is a bit of a burden....
  But tbh most didn't need a SUV in Paris...for the off chance they went somewhere else were it makes sense....once or twice.
- How else would regulation work? If we didn't allow changing anything that already exists, there'd still be cars with leaded fuel everywhere.
- One has to take responsibilities for what he purchases. Most SUV buyers have not 'cutting costs' as a priority.
- Boo hoo, cry me a river

I'm sure the folks who drive larger vehicles because they're hauling things like wheelchairs will protest that.
There ARE valid reasons for SUVs.
- Well, it shouldn't be hard to write in an exemption just for folks with wheelchairs. It's almost a non-issue.
- There ARE valid reasons for SUVs.
  no. not really.
  Professionals who need something with storage space for work use vans.
  People who need to also transport a wheelchair will use a different car, that is not terribly to get in and out of.
  SUVs have 0 reasons to exist, especially outside the US
  
  The prices will apply to vehicles weighing more than 1.6 tonnes with a combustion engine or hybrid vehicles, and more than 2 tonnes for electric vehicles.
  Seems like it applies to vans as well
  
  I'm not really understanding, what makes the US different in this regard?
  
  People who need to also transport a wheelchair will use a different car, that is not terribly to get in and out of.
  A car most likely wouldn't work for many wheelchair users who drive because they essentially need something they can just get them and their chair lifted directly into, lock their wheels down and start driving. But that doesn't require an SUV. A van would work too. That's what a friend of mine in high school drove.
- Luckily the bus and subway in Paris are both wheelchair accessible, safe, and easy to use.
  
  Also it's extra squeaky!
  
  How is the Metro wheelchair accessible? When I was there were no elevators or ramps at most smaller stations and the stairways were quite steep.
- if you have a wheelchair you get dedicated parking spaces anyway. what's your problem? what are you talking about?
- I'm pretty sure disabled driver have free parking.
- And those with the proper credentials can be e excepted.
- They will be exempted, as well as residents and professionals.
- There are also valid reasons for disabled people to be against SUVs, and the abundance of cars in general: pollution creates disabilities, and so much pollution comes from car tyres. I know, because I have a disability that's associated with said pollution, and I wouldn't wish this on anyone else so I really hope we can replace car use with less polluting methods as soon as possible. And then there's the more physical way: cars crashing into people also creates disabilities. If you're disabled, you're probably more likely to have sympathy for all the other disabilities that cars contribute to creating, and would prefer if SUVs and cars were replaced by other methods.
- The truth is (at least in the USA), a vast majority of people who own SUVs don't really need an SUV. This video explains it a lot better than I ever could: https://youtu.be/jN7mSXMruEo
  I would bet that Parisians saw the hell that the USA went through with absurdly large cars and car dependency and wish to prevent that from happening to their city, which this additional fee would help disincentivize.
  If you are open to learning more, I highly suggest looking into Strong Towns, which this video series by the same creator does a great job of summarizing: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJp5q-R0lZ0_FCUbeVWK6OGLN69ehUTVa
  It shows the issues that many cities put themselves in by depending on cars and proposes ways we can improve our cities for the benefit of everyone (especially the disabled).
  
  Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
  https://piped.video/jN7mSXMruEo
  https://www.piped.video/playlist?list=PLJp5q-R0lZ0_FCUbeVWK6OGLN69ehUTVa
  Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
  I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.