Paris is making more forward-thinking moves to combat congestion and pollution on its streets and will slap SUV owners with additional parking fees from next year.
SUVs and oversized vehicles are exploding in popularity around the world, and environmental groups, road safety experts and transport planners are sounding the alarm.
In Paris, the number of SUVs has increased by 60% over the last four years and now account for 15% of the total 1.15 million private vehicles parked in the city every evening, according to The Guardian.
The newspaper reports that in response, the Council of Paris voted unanimously last month to introduce higher parking fees for SUVs.
“We would like the city of Paris to change the pricing of paid parking to make it progressive according to the weight and size of vehicles," says councillor Frédéric Badina-Serpette.
He says he aim is “to focus on an absurdity: auto-besity … the inexorable growth in the weight and size of vehicles circulating in our cities, and particularly in Paris”.
The measure will take into account the size, weight and motor of the vehicles, though electric vehicles and large families requiring larger cars are expected to be granted exemptions.
“There are no dirt paths , no mountain roads … SUVs are absolutely useless in Paris," says David Belliard, deputy mayor responsible for public space and mobility policy. "Worse, they are dangerous, cumbersome and use too many resources to manufacture."
The SUV situation in Paris mirrors that seen in many places around the world, namely Australia, the US, India and the rest of Europe.
Last year, the International Energy Agency revealed that the strong increase in global SUV sales amounted to an additional 500,000 barrels of oil consumed per day between 2021 and 2022, offsetting much of the environmental gains being made by a shift to electric SUV models.
This is not the first step France has taken to counter the surging popularity of larger vehicles, having already introduced a weight tax on heavy cars to tackle CO2 emissions.
Paris has also previously outlined plans to remove 70,000 of its 140,000 surface parking spaces in its bid to make the city more pedestrian and bike friendly.
In Australia, SUVs accounted for more than 50% of new vehicles sold in 2022. Meanwhile, even larger American-sourced pickup trucks like the RHD Ram and Chevy Silverado are selling at record pace.
Transport experts have pointed to tax incentives as impetus for this new appetite for larger vehicles, prompting some to call for smaller parking spaces and narrow lanes built exclusively for small cars.
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