54.6% voted for the increase… turnout was 5.7%. So just over 3% of the eligible Parisian population voted for this.
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.
Out of curiosity, how do you know they’re the same people in both groups you described?
LOL at all the SUV drivers that didn’t go to vote
They were trying to find parking during the vote and missed it.
The turnout for those things is always extremely low.
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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.
Awesome, fuck SUV’s
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.
Wait, they banned electric scooter rentals?
Is the main argument that they’re unsightly?
They said they’re dangerous and cause stress for pedestrians
Stand up scooters should use the bike lanes.
AFAIK, the main issue wasn’t where they’re used but where they’re stored. While scooters riding on sidewalks is an issue, the bigger issue is them cluttering the sidewalk and becoming an impedance to pedestrians, especially those with disabilities.
Because humans are known for following rules to a fault.
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.
most people who buy their own don’t leave it out on the street, and (while I’m not in paris…) my experience is they also tend to be more responsible about it. like riding while sober, wearing helmets, and being in the bike lane (or wherever they’re supposed to be)
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.
Parisians hate their fellow countrymen almost as much as they hate Americans.
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.
It’s not a landslide but it’s pretty clear which side one. Now 50.1% could be a rounding error.
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.
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
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.
What about hybrid crossover SUVs?
They pay an additional tax for being ugly
Seriously, just because something has a battery doesn’t mean you have to pull the animators from the Jetson’s out of storage to design a future car.
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
Well that was easy.
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.
I would be a little annoyed if they did this to my car in a parking tbh/j
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.
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’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
I’m not really understanding, what makes the US different in this regard?
the onyl reason they exist in the US is because a regulations loophole.
The EU doesn’t have that loophole, so SUVs don’t even have that reason to exist. Which you can see, as SUVs are super rare in the EU, while they top all car sales ranks in the US in the last couple years
SUVs and crossovers are most popular cars in Europe.
Here’s a French source, coincidentally: https://www.lemonde.fr/en/economy/article/2023/09/14/suvs-now-dominate-european-car-market_6135326_19.html
Til that model y is a suv.
You didn’t notice until now?
Just looks like a slightly raised sedan to me. Shrug
Have you been to Europe? Have you walked the streets of Paris? The US was built with enough space being everywhere. American roads are wider, cities are mostly built like square-grids of roads built in a time when cats existed whereas European cities emerged in the middle ages. They’re tightly packed with little extra space. Sometimes (very rarely) here there are old Cadillacs that can be rented for weddings. Seeing one of these cars on the street is an unreal experience. They’re just so huge. They don’t fit on the streets here - and those are cars from the 60s or 70s. Everything seems tiny compared to them. From a European perspective it’s really stupid to build such large vehicles as driving and parking it is much more complicated when everything is build for small cars. Now that SUVs are becoming popular here too it’s just a really annoying. Less parking space per vehicle etc. On cities like Paris - one of the tightest city on Europe this is just annoying. And i haven’t even written about fuel consumption. Paris has had huge problems with smog in recent years.
I haven’t been to Western Europe but I do live in Singapore with roads that I would say are quite narrow and SUVs aren’t that rare here either. So I can’t say I really understand entirely but I think I do get what you mean.
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.
Luckily the bus and subway in Paris are both wheelchair accessible, safe, and easy to use.
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.
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.
Penis enhancement
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
Good. They are about as expensive as normal car park fees in Amsterdam.
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.
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.
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
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.Not saying this is what you’re saying, but the average french SUV doesn’t cost 100k. In-laws bought one almost new for 15k. They’re not poor, but definitely not rich, and would think twice about buying one next time if it means they pay more for parking.
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
Is a 1401kg 5 door EV considered an SUV?
For electric vehicles the weight needs to be over 2000kg in order to be considered a SUV
15k for an almost new SUV? I think you are probably confusing a CUV with an SUV
15k € used. The (french) car dealer called the car a SUV, but I’ll admit I’m not an expert.
But even if you call that something different, there aren’t a lot of 100k SUVs in France, I can tell you that.
French people will drive a 20 year old kangoo and be proud of it. I know because that is me.
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.
We drive a Toyota Yaris and bitch about the price of gas.
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.
Oh we know, we’ve seen the videos.
